This issue is so important I’m asking my readers and other bloggers to do whatever they can to help spread the word and protect men and their future children. Any blogger who wishes to is free to repost this entry in part or its entirety on their own blog with a link back to this page. Literally millions of men are at risk here, and we can help them understand the reality they face.

One of the more dangerous assumptions I see men making is that if they marry a Christian woman they will be somehow shielded from the epidemic of divorce. I’ve stated in the past that most churches talk like Christ but act like Oprah on the issue of divorce. I’ve also shown how Christians like Glenn Stanton from Focus on the Family are actually proud that devout Christians only divorce 38% of the time. More recently I’ve shown that the movie Christians cherish for representing their values on marriage is actually barely dressed up divorce porn for women.

Yet with all of this even I was stunned by comments left on my blog yesterday by a respected Christian author and speaker on the topic of marriage. In my post Promiscuity is good, so long as it is done on the woman’s terms I pointed out that there is no backing for the popular belief that the female preferred form of promiscuity (serial monogamy/ serial polyandry) is more moral than the male preferred form of promiscuity. I used the example of Christians arguing that the wife in Fireproof was justified in her attempt to swing from marriage to marriage:

This is similar to the argument by the Christian women that the wife in Fireproof wasn’t being whorish because she planned on divorcing her husband and marrying the other man she was after before having sex with him.

Sheila Gregoire is one of the Christian women I had in mind when I made that statement, and she noticed the post and defended her position:

But I just want to clarify: I do believe that she had grounds for divorce because of his pornography addiction. I think that’s where the fundamental disagreement comes in. I don’t think she SHOULD have divorced him, anymore than I think a woman should leave a guy because of a one-night stand. Jesus never said that we SHOULD divorce. He only said that in cases of affairs, divorce is permitted.

And so in the movie Fireproof, she was in a relationship where divorce was permitted, and she was planning on divorcing, and planning on remarrying. Thus, I wouldn’t say that’s whorish. He’s the one who cheated.

I’m just uncomfortable with you saying that Christians are allowing people to “whore” around because we’re permitting divorce, when I don’t think that’s the case. I believe there are very narrow grounds for divorce: abuse, affairs, and in some cases, addictions. In many of those cases, I’d argue that they should separate and not remarry, such as the case of addictions.

Note that she states that there should be only a few very defined reasons for divorce, and then proceeds to expand the definition to the point where nearly every wife initiated divorce is justified. Adultery is expanded to the point where a man watching porn qualifies: He’s the one who cheated.

While Sheila uses the term pornography addiction in her comment, this is outside her primary justification (porn as adultery) for the wife’s plan to line up husband number two while still married to the first one. She states that addiction would be grounds for separation without remarriage, not to divorce and find another man. Based on her own standard even if the husband had indeed been shown as a porn addict, the wife’s actions would not have been justified on those grounds. Her justification is that watching pornography is adultery. This may be why the creators of the movie Fireproof were so murky on exactly what the husband’s transgression regarding porn really was. They didn’t feel the need to make a solid case for porn addiction before they showed the wife shutting off entirely towards her husband and actively pursuing another man. As I pointed out in my review the wife didn’t even accuse the husband of being a porn addict, and while the term was used later in the movie there was nothing which showed the husband as being an addict. Here is the exchange from the movie where we are told the husband is viewing porn:

Catherine: If looking at that trash is how you get fulfilled, then that is fine. But I will not compete with it.

Caleb: Well, I sure don’t get it from you!

Catherine: And you won’t. Because you care more about saving for your stupid boat and pleasing yourself than you ever did about me.

The fundamental problem is that Christian women are being given get out of marriage free cards while Christian men are being told man up and marry these Christian women. This selective moral softness from Christians combines with our legal system which rewards women who commit divorce theft and creates millions of fatherless children. Your husband looked at porn? Dump him and find another man! Keep in mind this isn’t some corner case example I’ve made up. This is from the movie Christians profess shows their views on marriage. Moreover, Sheila isn’t just another commenter on the internet, she is a respected author and speaker on the topic of marriage for Christian women. All men need to understand this; if your wife decides to divorce you for another man, there will be well respected Christians lining up to justify her decision and place all of the blame on you. If that means conflating viewing pornography with actual adultery, so be it. This is true even in cases where the wife was withholding sex in an effort to control the husband. She even excuses the wife lining up the other man while still married.

It isn’t just men viewing porn which gives women a get out of marriage free card though. Sheila also listed abuse as the other fundamental justification for divorce. In one of Sheila’s video blogs she reminded women that they shouldn’t assume husbands are the only ones with obligations. This brought her a chorus of emails from angry Christian women complaining that she was telling them not to be true to themselves. That Christian women would feel comfortable spouting such nonsense to her should be proof enough of what is so terribly broken in Christian culture. To Sheila’s credit, she did a follow on video blog post where she gently reminded these women that being true to yourself is not actually a biblical value. One of the youtube commenters on the original video countered with the following:

Your advice is nice, in thought, but unrealistic in practice. I did that exact thing for 7 years, as a married Christian woman. It got rough after the first year. I doubted my marriage. But I stuck it out. I convinced myself it was ME who needed to change. So I did. I completely revamped my entire being. And I did it several times over the next 6 years.

I will say, I was extremely emotionally abused. What do you suggest in those circumstances? I got out. And my life is happier than ever.

What exactly is emotional abuse? I’m not sure, but ladies you will be excited to learn it also counts as a get out of marriage free card! Sheila responded with the following:

Of course, if there is abuse going on, that is a totally different story. But changing yourself doesn’t mean that you change who you fundamentally are. It just means that you change your expectations and go to God to help you be the person He wants you to be. That’s a good kind of change. Changing so that you tolerate abuse is something else entirely. But abuse was not the issue in this woman’s letter; she just felt like she didn’t love him.

So now we know emotional abuse fits in her definition of abuse. Again, she states that only two very specific reasons justify divorce and then proceeds to expand the terms to the point where nearly every wife initiated divorce is justified.

Sheila also had the following criticism for my approach in this blog:

I find that you talk a lot on this blog about how people should never divorce (which I more or less agree with), and that women shouldn’t expect so much from their husbands (which I also agree with), and that women are asking their husbands to be both betas and alphas at the same time (which I also agree with), and that women leave their husbands too much (again, in agreement). But what I don’t find is you dealing honestly with genuine problems that couples have with communication, with distance, with betrayal of trust, with porn, etc. I agree with everything you’re saying, but I don’t think marriages can be fixed with a simple “suck it up and put on your big girl panties”. That might make someone STAY in the marriage, but it won’t make the marriage thrive, and what I’d like to see is couples who are genuinely attached and intimate.

Sheila misunderstands me. I don’t believe people should never divorce. My concern is that the definition of justified divorce has been so expanded as to make a mockery of the concept of marriage. She is also missing a fundamental point; putting on your big girl panties really does lead to happy marriages, at least in the majority of cases. Moreover, if Christians were serious about holding men and women to their vows they would then have the moral authority to try to assist these couples in good faith. While religious leaders may disagree, secular scientists have studied the issue and found that brute force willpower to stay married actually solves surprisingly difficult marital problems. It’s almost as if God designed marriage that way. I’ve covered this in detail here, but here is one of the key quotes from one paper which studied this:

Many currently happily married spouses have had extended periods of marital unhappiness, often for quite serious reasons, including alcoholism, infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, depression, illness, and work reversals. Why did these marriages survive where other marriages did not? The marital endurance ethic appears to play a big role. Many spouses said that their marriages got happier, not because they and their partner resolved problems but because they stubbornly outlasted them. With time, they told us, many sources of conflict and distress eased.

One factor which undoubtedly plays a role here is the widespread adoption of feminism by Christian and secular women alike. The knee jerk blame the husband tendency which I have described above shows how immersed modern Christianity is in modern feminism. Fellow blogger Laura Grace Robbins captured my own thoughts when she wrote:

I’m starting to think the feminism in Christianity cuts much, much deeper than I originally thought.

I’ll close with a brief defense of both Sheila Gregoire and Christian women in general. Sheila is actually one of the stronger pro marriage voices in modern Christian culture. This is what makes her fundamental weakness on the issue so deeply troubling. She isn’t on the pro divorce fringe, she is one of the speakers churches bring in to strengthen marriage. She writes some of the books Christian wives read on the topic of marriage. I have focused on her arguments because she is proof of how incredibly soft on marriage Christians in general have become. If this weren’t the case, she wouldn’t be seen as pro marriage by mainstream Christians. As for defending Christian women, there are many women who comment on this blog who do not believe that a woman is justified in divorcing one man and marrying another because the first husband viewed pornography. Single men looking to marry shouldn’t write off all Christian women. Just like there are atheist women who truly believe in marriage there still are Christian women who feel the same, and the statistics bear this out. What a man looking to marry needs to do is test for this trait in the woman herself, and not assume it comes with regular church attendance or even a seeming deep devotion to Christianity. More difficult is the question of church attendance itself. Studies have shown that divorce tends to spread like disease. Attending a church which is soft on divorce puts a man’s marriage (and therefore his children) at risk. Unfortunately no one has yet been able to identify a congregation for me which isn’t soft on marriage. I have seen one so I do know they exist. Christianity doesn’t have to be soft on marriage, the vast majority of Christians have merely chosen to be.

I’ll post something tomorrow on my blog. It’s an extremely good topic and should be discussed in churches everywhere.

If marriage is indeed a holy institution, churches should be doing everything possible to preserve it within the congregation. If men are expected to man up, women should woman up and do their part to preserve the sanctity of the marriage.

I’m reminded of the commenter J who used to drop by here, who in Dalrock’s post about churches declining to be serious about shaming frivolous divorce said in essence “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s [read: women’s] feelings.” No concern of the feelings of husbands and children victimized by walkaway wives, just concern that people who had already made a mockery of their vows might feel uncomfortable.

I thought this was just a mild roadblock, that if women really understood the system as a whole they’d understand they were putting the integrity of their own marriages and those of their children at risk. I misunderestimated how strong this attitude would be, and I’m forced to wonder how much of it is discomfort with hurting “feelings” and how much of it is a roundabout way of protecting their own ability to walk away should they not “feel it” anymore.

There is usually an unspoken subtext when the word “divorce” is used. As I mentioned on another thread, except in cases of overt physical danger, it’s unlikely that most people who seek divorce would do so if they knew, up front, they’d never marry again. ALMOST ALWAYS, when people ask, “Is it okay to get a divorce?”, the unspoken second half of that sentence is, “And find someone else?”

I know of nobody who says that someone should stay with a spouse who is abusive, adulterous, dangerously addicted, poses a danger to the children, etc. There are some things that just can’t be worked out, they can only be repented of — and until and unless repentance comes, for the safety and sanity of the innocent party, a separation may be needed. And for several legal reasons — eg, since spouses are legally responsible for each others’ debts — it may be necessary, for the protection of the innocent spouse (and perhaps children), to go through a legal, civil divorce.

However, the existence of a civil divorce decree from the State, does not terminate a marriage in God’s eyes Legally, in a free country, nothing stops you from finding someone else. But in God’s eyes, remarriage is adultery. (I will demolish the misinterpretation of the “exception clause” another day; suffice to say, adultery is a valid reason to leave, but it does NOT constitute permission to find someone new — contrary to most contemporary Protestant teaching.) In nearly all (perhaps, actually all) cases of divorce, the directive of Scripture is… Remain single, or be reconciled.

In my 25 years in the evangelical world, I’ve observed a growing unholy laxity about this. When I first got saved, the churches I attended, made a very clear distinction between which divorcees were, and which were not, “biblically free” to remarry. And the line was surprisingly strict, and they stuck to their guns even though people walked out of the church over it. That has totally collapsed now, and virtually nobody seems to care about divorce and remarriage any more. That’s almost an argument for crossing the Tiber except that they’re handing out annulments like candy.

How would our church culture change, if we took the teaching of Jesus — that post-divorce remarriage to another party, is simply adultery — seriously? What if we dared to re-stigmatize it?

Another home run of a post, Dalrock – in fact, a Grand Slam home run. You nailed the fundamental issues which men have been trying to bring to people’s attention for years, and facing an absolute stone wall of denial while trying to do so.

Perhaps one of these days the smokescreen of bullshit will get pierced by posts like this one, and the issues will start being discussed honestly and men and women will start working toward a resolution.

Further.. the criticism has often been levelled at us — usually by sodomites and their apologists — that we thunder condemnations of homosexuality (the mote in someone else’s eye) but have ignored the log of divorce in our own eyes? Let’s take that criticism seriously, and — without even slightly compromising on our God mandated hostiltity to homosexuality — let us MATCH it by howling equally loudly against the sin of divorce and remarriage.

theprivateman – “If men are expected to man up, women should woman up and do their part to preserve the sanctity of the marriage.”

I’m afraid that suggesting that women need to be a part of preserving the sanctity of marriage isn’t going to go over very well throughout most of Churchianity. It seems like it might entail a bit of self-sacrifice on their part, which would be diametrically opposed to their Holy and sacred duty to be true to themselves.

Funny how they can elevate men viewing pornography as tantamount to infidelity, but can only manage the mildest of rebukes for women. It seems it’s no problem what-so-ever if a married woman wishes to entertain fantasies of divorcing her husband and pursuing other men, or if they read stacks of the textual-porn found in female-centric “Romance Novels” (Christian and secular alike). I bet it’s even generally accepted for Christian women to join with their daughters in lusting after “Edward Cullen” and making public spectacles of themselves movie theaters.

But, just let a married man have a moment of weakness and look at a picture of a nude woman, and BAM! – he’s betrayed her just as surely as if he’d been in her bed having sex with her.

And, plenty of good Christian women will be rallying to her support should the poor (emotionally) abused, (sexually) neglected, and humiliated wife decide that the marriage id over. [So much for those claims that there is no such thing as “Team Woman” from the fine ladies over at Traditional Christianity.]

Dalrockhas been dead-on of late when it comes this larger topic of supposedly Christian women and their rather soft view of the institution of marriage. Glad to see he isn’t pulling any punches to make the women feel more comfortable.

Otherwise quite rational women like those who’ve retreated from forums such as this one so as to insulate themselves from the harsh words used to covey harsh realities in the Manosphere might well consider that while all they have to do to “escape” the ugly realities addressed by the Manosphere is stop reading, men have no such escape from the misandric realities permeating throughout their lives – at work, in the public square, and now at home and at church.

They hand out annulments like candy, and the easy way to do it is to claim “I didn’t understand my vows, so I didn’t consent.”

Which is amusing when you see so many stories about people in the Bible making vows they did not understand when they made them and having to abide them. Jephthah’s oath and subsequent sacrifce of his daughter in Judges comes to mind.

Women get told “that the man may be the head of the household, but the woman is the spiritual head of the family.” I have heard that phrase verbatum from both catholic and protestant women and preachers/priests.

For those men looking to marry a good christian woman, good luck, and here’s a hint to steer you to safety: Wearing a cross around the neck that can be seen in public is a slut tell.

Catherine: If looking at that trash is how you get fulfilled, then that is fine. But I will not compete with it.Caleb: Well, I sure don’t get it from you!

Often glossed over here, is that BOTH spouses are in sin! Yes, the husband shouldn’t be looking at porn. (Matt 5:28) We all get this, right up front.

But she equally should not be depriving him of sex, either. (1st Cor 7:5). Indeed the passage says, “Because there is so much sexual immorality (Greek: porneia!), let each man have his own wife, and each wife have her own husband” (1st Cor 7:2). In other words, the command to satisfy one’s spouse, was explicity given, because of porneia… How much clearer could it be?

Which came first? It’s probably different in different marriages (and the movie IIRC doesn’t say), but both need to repent.

Ah, but some argue, both are sins but one of them has a different implication with respect to divorce: Adultery (supposedly) is grounds for divorce-remarriage, but a denial of service attack on the marital bed is not. We shall demolish the adultery “exception” later….

Country Lawyer – Women get told “that the man may be the head of the household, but the woman is the spiritual head of the family.”

In many way, the idea of male “Headship” has been reduced to little more than “designated scape-goat”.

How many times have we (collectively speaking, of course) seen a husbands and father who has virtually no ability to stand counter to his wife’s wishes/dictates still end up being blamed when the kid’s ended up going bad, when the finances go south, or when the wife gets caught in infidelity (the real kind, not just looking at nudie pics)? Despite that he was simply over-run like a door-mat, he somehow “failed” to live up to his God-given duty to prevent all the bad sh*t from happening to her… um, er, “them”.

A person marrying a Christian should feel confident that they won’t end up divorced for any but the most dire of causes.

The problem is that talk is cheap. There’s a big difference between a Christian and someone who calls themself a Christian. Going to church is no proof either. I’ve known hard-code evangelical atheists who were, in the end, better Christians than the median congregant at the average suburban parish.

Pastors love preaching against the sins that their parishioners aren’t likely to be committing in large numbers, like sodomy. Not so much, the ones that large fractions are deeply engaged in and ideologically committed to, like frivolous divorce.

If you’re not a disciple of Christ in the way you live your life, you’re not a Christian, regardless of what words you say or don’t say, or where you spend your Sundays.

In determining how much to trust someone, especially a prospective spouse, it’s never a good idea to allow something that’s easy to fake (being a self-described “Christian”) to substitute for something that’s hard to fake (integrity in following the example of Christ in one’s life).

Badger – “I’m forced to wonder how much of it is discomfort with hurting “feelings” and how much of it is a roundabout way of protecting their own ability to walk away should they not “feel it” anymore.”

Well, have you ever known of good, professing “anti-feminist”, Christian women being willing to give up any of the privileges that feminism won for them (as a gender)? [other than just claiming that they would in Internet blog posts, I mean.]

@ slwerner-Well, have you ever known of good, professing “anti-feminist”, Christian women being willing to give up any of the privileges that feminism won for them (as a gender)? [other than just claiming that they would in Internet blog posts, I mean.]

Well, have you ever known of good, professing “anti-feminist”, Christian women being willing to give up any of the privileges that feminism won for them (as a gender)? [other than just claiming that they would in Internet blog posts, I mean.]

What privileges have women who were married at 22 years old to men who insisted on having a wife that is not career driven or even employed full time availed themselves of? And if we have forgone all of the privileges, how does your argument hold up?

However, and I expect this comment to generate some unhappiness, I think you may be missing the extent to which certain inherent issues in Christianity exacerbate the problem. Above all, the ethos of forgiveness can be taken as an enticement to sin. I know that Christian doctrine requires absolute inner repentence for forgiveness to be genuine, so you’re not supposed to be able to fake it, but since only you and God know what’s in your heart, how reliable is that as a deterret to sin? Also, as you have pointed out, in our soft, feminized, lax culture, people act badly and then repent over and over, no doubt (so they think) “genuinely.” But somehow they still do it again (and again). And Christian doctrine allows for that.

Nothing I’m saying here is original; you can find it rather baldly stated in Gibbon and more covertly in Machiavelli. Or this, from Bacon: “And one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Machiavel, had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plain terms, That the Christian faith had given up good men in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust.”

There is something to be said for the ethos of the Old Testament: “I don’t care what’s in your heart; shut up and obey the law!”

putting on your big girl panties really does lead to happy marriages, at least in the majority of cases.

Correlation, not causation. In a divorce-friendly culture people who choose to hang in there probably have the kinds of characteristics necessary to create a happier marriage. In places where divorce is illegal, there are probably plenty of terribly unhappy couples who just keep on making each other miserable decade after decade. That does not, however, negate the fact that marriage is good for society, good for children, women, and men (in that order). It seems brutal to allow for no loopholes on divorce, but once you have loopholes, they quickly get expanded to tunnel size by anyone looking for an easier short term. And, long term, there is much, much more unhappiness for everyone.

I completely agree with you that the Church goes far too easy on divorce. The different denominations are probably (legitimately) afraid that if they take a hard line now, they will lose a significant proportion of their congregations. But that is a weak position for a leader to take, and probably why so many have abandoned the church despite its openness to modern mores.

The bottom line in modern Churchianity: Eve doesn’t sin, and if she does, it’s her husband’s fault anyway.

The Evangelical community has not much to offer men except lectures and accusations that they are all porno addict, wife beating, drunk, Peter Pans. I still remember Solomon on his blog very easily got the Deacon’s daughter to text him nude photos. The church is full of technical virgins.

Promise Keepers and accountability groups for the men. Social clubs for the women. I remember at my Church the pastor said during a sermon that the wife should submit to the husband. You could hear a pin drop. I looked around at the pissed off faces of the faithful sisters. He then had to go on for ten minutes explaining himself that “What I really meant was, only kind of, you know, f you feel like it and stuff…” or something to that effect. Weak.

I have rarely seen a group of men so terrified of women and in fear of earning their ire as I have at Church. It’s like they are breeding betas and sending them to the slaughter. These guys are trained from the get go that if the wife isn’t happy, it’s because they are crappy husbands. Momma not happy, ain’t no one gonna be happy. They must do anything to submit to their wives.

Wife cheats on you? What did you do to drive her to do that? I actually had a pastor say that to me. Are you F’ing kidding me? Not enough boys lining up to the legal slaughter? Man up boys. No. We don’t care if you don’t like the pickings or the odds. You’ll have to pick one anyway.

The objective of the Church culture is to get young people to marry so they can avoid the sin of pre-marital sex. After that they could give a crap what happens to them. Especially the man. The wife, they don’t worry about. They know she’ll be setup just fine from the settlement. And there will be excuses aplenty offered from the sisters to console “that poor woman” who had no choice but to cheat on that mean man and take half his stuff and kids.

It reminds me of Shakespeare, “Even the Devil can quote scripture to suit his purposes”

I dare any pastor to get up in front of the congregation and call out the wives and say today we’re going to talk about your obligations and duties to your husbands. We’re starting an accountability group for you women to help you overcome your difficulties meeting your responsibilities as wives. Cold day in Hell.

That does not, however, negate the fact that marriage is good for society, good for children, women, and men (in that order). It seems brutal to allow for no loopholes on divorce, but once you have loopholes, they quickly get expanded to tunnel size by anyone looking for an easier short term.

I agree with you, Grerp.

I completely agree with you that the Church goes far too easy on divorce. The different denominations are probably (legitimately) afraid that if they take a hard line now, they will lose a significant proportion of their congregations. But that is a weak position for a leader to take, and probably why so many have abandoned the church despite its openness to modern mores.

This must be a serious problem in America. Over here, were I to meet a woman (as I occasionally do) who tells me that she is a Christian, I metaphorically roll my eyes, and make my excuses, or if I have yet to finish my drink claim ignorance of all things Xtian (that brings out the poor-dear mothering instinct) and ask her to explain how Jesus would be approving of her latest promiscuity (he would!). Even Tony Blair (he, an ex-Xtian who has now gone Catholic) famously said that if you say you are an Xtian they think that you are a ‘nutter’ – and we, not you, are the ones with religion ordained by the State, though it is optional.

Quite how, a divorced woman (frequently a mother) thinks that she is going to go back on the dating market with her pre-marraige SMV in tact I do not know. Neither can I see how any man (and we all like porn) is likely to see her as anything other than pump-and-dump material – assuming he has any interest – I do not know.

Some of course do remarry and successfully, but frequently divorce is just the beginning of a slow decline, where the quality of the boyfriends drifts ever lower as her MMV does likewise. Not only are divorced people less happy than the married, but the married tend to be better-off (two incomes), provide more secure upbringings for their off-spring and have a higher social-cache – that is to say a better life generally. Finally, when their children become adult and in their turn wish to marry they will find that to some extent prospective spouses will think twice about marrying a product of a broken home (well I would) – like mother: like daughter – often.

“The different denominations are probably (legitimately) afraid that if they take a hard line now, they will lose a significant proportion of their congregations.”

Christianity was founded by the act of an almighty deity donning human flesh specifically in order to be tortured and then nailed to a cross. Uncountable numbers of its early adherents died violently simply because they refused to renounce it. The pace of death by martyrdom slowed down considerably with the conversion of the Roman Emperor, but never entirely stopped, and indeed continues to this day.

Go ahead and ask just how much sympathy I have for any man who has taken on the role of a shepherd of this flock, accepted the socially privileged position such a title hands him in our society, enjoys the complete immunity of a modern inhabitant of a Western, industrialized country to the risk of martyrdom, and yet quakes in fear at the notion of speaking against a mortal sin, just because that sin is popular among the pew-packers in front of him, and he doesn’t want to lose their contributions to the collection plate.

I actually women are the major cause of divorce. The Bible says a wise woman builds her home but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands. I have been mentoring women for 8 years and have seen marriages restored after a husband has an affair. I teach women to win their husbands “without a word” because God does indeed hate divorce. Every single women I have mentored has improved their marriage dramatically by learning to love, serve, and please her husband.

The objective of the Church culture is to get young people to marry so they can avoid the sin of pre-marital sex.

If only that were so. Too often, “singles” ministries seem to have an unspoken agenda to keep the singles, single, so they’ll have more freedom to serve the chur… um, the Lord. Anti-dating teaching and similar nonsense abounds. Frankly, I found “singles ministries”, although beneficial in many other respects, ranged from neutral to downright hostile toward my matrimonial hopes.

I hesitate to link to the the Purposeful Singleness website, as I disagree with 99% of that site’s content, but this one article deals with the struggles of singleness better than I ever could: http://singleness.org/talkdown.shtml

“Every single women I have mentored has improved their marriage dramatically by learning to love, serve, and please her husband.”

Lori, there’s a book out titled “It Only Takes One to Turn a Relationship Around” or something like that. The theory that one person can shift the energy and direction of an environment or relationship is gaining ground, so yeah, it can happen, provided the other person isn’t totally off their rocker.

2 var Rooniek
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Often glossed over here, is that BOTH spouses are in sin! Yes, the husband shouldn’t be looking at porn. (Matt 5:28) We all get this, right up front.
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Mod… Ya know, this — http://singleness.org/talkdown.shtml — might merit a post of its own someday. No matter how we fight, rail, and reform, SOME singles are going to be just plain left out, and this article addresses that better than anything else I’ve ever seen. Please consider it…

van Rooinek
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Matt. 5:28: “…I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Rather obvious.
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No, there is nothing at all about porn.
First of all, how can you commit adultery with a woman if she is not married?
Secondly, what does it have to do with porn specifically? Images of attractive women in Hollywood movies, or images of Victoria Secret models can evoke exactly the same feelings, but for some strange reason porn is singled out, but other highly sexualized images are left alone

van Rooinek – “Matt. 5:28: “…I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Does the gender-specific language therein suggest that it is not a sin for women to do likewise?

And, I’m a little worried here because, truth is, I tend to speed a lot when driving. Is my willful disregard of the speed limit laws (I am a law-breaker, after all) tantamount to seeking to overthrow the government? Just curious, what with looking-lusting-adultery of porn, if I’m only imagining my “sin” to be less harmful than if I were taking up arms against those who made the laws I tend to disregard?

“Anti-dating teaching and similar nonsense abounds”How do they expect couples to form, if not through dating?

An excellent question which they are still unable to answer. Yet, they’re sure that dating is wrong, somehow. The madness had been trickling through evangelicaldom for a while but in 1997, a book called “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” was published, became a best seller, largely due to large numbers of women who’d been hurt by dating jerks, seizing on the book as an excuse to drop out of the romance market. A lot of marriages were probably prevented by that book.

I used to think that infidelity was good grounds for divorce but now I’m not so sure.

How many hear would be willing to work things out if their spouse cheated on them?

My instinct is to say that I would try to work it out because everyone deserves a second chance if he truly feels sorry about it. As well, I’m sure that the pain of being cheated on is great, but somehow, I imagine that the pain of losing that person forever would be even greater.

And of course, there’s always the desire to take revenge on the other woman—“he still wants to be with me, in your face you effin, worthless whore!”

===========================
“Matt. 5:28: “…I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Rather obvious.”

Actually this is pretty much impossible to follow in todays media driven society, we have hot chicks & what most christians wld consider porn plastered all over billboards & tv
===========================

One of the sensible translations of Matt 5:28 based on original meanings of greek and hebrew words before translation into English translates it as “That whosoever looketh on a woman (married to other man) to covet after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

That translation makes perfect sense and can be followed in the modern world

Sandy- ““That whosoever looketh on a woman (married to other man) to covet after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

That translation makes perfect sense and can be followed in the modern world”

Fully agree, thats the verse as i remember when i used to a be a christian, makes you wonder why the church would omit the “to covet after” in modern translations … oh yea precisely because theyre modern … lol

You can divorce for whatever reasons you wish. No one will stop you. However, if you have kids you should consider the effects the divorce will have on them. Even if your wife/husband cheated on you, you must still put the children first.

Well I take issue with this, i normally find grerps posts refreshing, but this is hamster minimalisation … the rest of her post pretty much sidestepped this thread

To clarify, I am against divorce. I think it is the thief that keeps on taking. I would worry about any man I knew getting married under the current legal climate, and I would support his decision not to marry as things are. I also think that many people who hang in there will find that marriage becomes bearable or even enjoyable again over time (as studies have shown). I also think, as Dalrock has often shown in his posts, that divorce often makes people just as unhappy or even more unhappy over time. Some people, however, are very unsuited to either each other or to marriage in general, and their marriages will probably be unhappy even if they hang in there. Marriage isn’t about making people happy all the time, however, it’s about creating an environment for creating and caring for children, as well as spouses and the elderly. Of course, right now we don’t have real marriage, we have serial monogamy for as long as it stays satisfying.

“Matt. 5:28: “…I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Looks like 100% of men in America are guilty of adultery then. Another get out of marriage free card for their wives. Short of all women wearing Burkas, and all media images being banned, I don’t think any man can avoid this trip wire (and if he says he can, he’s either lying or gay or asexual).

The other interpretation above make more sense (i.e., coveting after another’s wife in the sense of actually attempting to break up the marriage).

Full disclosure: I was raised in a religious household, but am an agnostic.

But I just want to clarify: I do believe that she had grounds for divorce because of his pornography addiction. I think that’s where the fundamental disagreement comes in. I don’t think she SHOULD have divorced him, anymore than I think a woman should leave a guy because of a one-night stand. Jesus never said that we SHOULD divorce. He only said that in cases of affairs, divorce is permitted.

That is messed up, is she seriously equating watching porn to the guy having an affair? And not only that, but just watching porn is grounds for divorce? As well, she does say “pornography addiction” without defining what that is, and without taking into consideration so many other factors—frequency, type of porn, if it affects their sex life or other parts of their relationship, if the husband suddenly wants to do messed up things (like BDSM), etc etc etc As well, if a guy does get addicted to porn, shouldn’t she at least try to help him get through it?

In any case, watching porn is not grounds for divorce and it is not cheating. However, I doubt that Sheila’s going to jump into this conversation any time soon.

“Marriage isn’t about making people happy all the time, however, it’s about creating an environment for creating and caring for children, as well as spouses and the elderly. ”

Exactly why I say EVEN IF your wife or husband really does cheat on you with a real live person, you should consider working things out for the sake of the kids, which is a very unpopular opinion today amongst the religious and irreligious alike.

Always happy to help out when Dalrock asks for another google bomb effort. After posting the link to this article and a few thoughts, I walked away from the PC when a new thought came to , so I amended my post with the following:

Sheila is a feminist….the worst kind. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

She appears to be “pro-marriage” but she’s spreading marriage and family destroying memes amongst the very people who are supposed to be the last vanguard of the bedrock of Christian-based civilization.

Think I’m making an overblown charge?

Let’s take the title of her blog – To Love, Honor & Vacuum.

On the surface it appears to be a call for Christian women to be better housewives. But exactly what is that title really imply? It’s a distortion of the common Christian marriage vow a wife makes at the altar – Love, Honor and OBEY.

Whether it was deliberate or subconscious, I still think it’s a subversive meme that aims at one of the Bible’s direct, unambiguous tenets regarding the institution of marriage…wives, submit to your husbands.

Just as the newly married, “modern” Princess of England had the word’s OBEY taken out of her Anglican Church vows — just like her adulterous, scandalous, deceased mother-in-law did — this “pro-marriage” Christian has replaced the vow of wifely obedience to her husband with a trivial domestic household chore using a modern appliance.

The problem is not Pro-marriage Christian women. It’s pro-Divorce justifications couched in the veneer of pro-Marriage Christianity.

“I do believe that she had grounds for divorce because of his pornography addiction. I think that’s where the fundamental disagreement comes in. I don’t think she SHOULD have divorced him, anymore than I think a woman should leave a guy because of a one-night stand. Jesus never said that we SHOULD divorce. He only said that in cases of affairs, divorce is permitted.”

Yes, even though there may be grounds for divorce, like cheating, whether one should divorce or not, in my opinion, depends on if they have children and the ages of those children. Anything is legal grounds for divorce in today’s world. And nobody thinks of the children. The children are usually the last consideration. The first consideration is always how the adults feel.

Its bullshit.

Ego took a hit because your wife blew the pool boy? Take it like a father!
Ego took a hit because your husband spends Friday night at the strip club? Take it like a mother!

Why is it so hard for adults to understand that the wellbeing of their kids come first?

There is a bit of a discussion on women’s suffrage over there, and he doesn’t think it’s a big deal when it comes to men’s issues. I’d like to see you two talk about it, because I do think it matters if women will use their voting power to block necessary corrections in the legal system. You can make that point far better than I.

“It’s a distortion of the common Christian marriage vow a wife makes at the altar – Love, Honor and OBEY.”

Not any of the weddings I’ve been too.

“The laws are ‘no fault’ which means ‘the man always pays’.”

I don’t know any divorced woman under 60 who gets alimony and child support goes both ways . I know several divorced women who are suffering great financial difficulty while their ex husbands are doing well. It seems you are going off an old paradigm, one that is at play with older generations , but certainly not mine.

TFH – I can believe that. Quite a bit of happiness, or contentment, is about expectations. If you expect that marriage is going to be about nonstop romance and attention and fun times, you will be disappointed. A culture that raises its young to have common goals, morals, and values, as well as self-discipline and self-sacrifice and then puts significant pressure on them to keep plugging away at will have many more happy marriages – even if the man and the woman did not consider themselves “soulmates” to begin with. Also, parents know more than their children and can often choose better for them than they can themselves.

Every system has weak spots and people who seek to exploit those, but this is much more likely to produce contented people than what we’ve got now.

grerp – “Well I take issue with this, i normally find grerps posts refreshing, but this is hamster minimalisation … the rest of her post pretty much sidestepped this thread

To clarify, I am against divorce. I think it is the thief that keeps on taking.”

I’m aware, as i implied of your stance on divorce, your post seems to minimalise the colossal effort it takes in todays divorce industry, to stay together as a family

Not only do you have a whole culture designed to make divorce as a tempting fake privilege for women, but you also have everything from cps services & schools spying on your kids, & your neighbours & society treating any father pushing a child trolley, as a pariah

Theres nothing correlative about a family choosing not to divorce, todays society causes ppl to make a colossal effort to stay together, regardless of whether they wldve chosen to stay together despite divorce culture

Just to point out, despite what most husbands think, such as dalrock, as a PUA, in my experience it is ridiculously easy to make a wife leave their husband if you know how a womans biology works, & which biological buttons to push

In fact married women, especially committed wives, are even easier as they are not prepared for the effect a PUA with tight game, has on a woman

Christian traditional women, are even easier as they dont have the experience of dealing with guys, luckily theyre not exactly hot either .. lol

Gerp, its easy to idealize foreign cultures and “magical minorities”. You can be sure that they have their marital issues too. In cultures where divorce is taboo, people stay married even if they are being severly beaten and even if the kids are getting molested.

Sheila should also address what’s causing him to watch porn. If the reason is because his wife is refusing sex or she wants it rarely, then Sheila should tell women that the man’s actions are completely acceptable and then she should also mention the part in the Bible that tells women to submit and also that her body is his. I see she’s picking and choosing, and it’s definitely a case of “team woman”.

PTB, it remains unclear whether you can immediately divorce your wife, however it seems that you may legitimately visit a brothel, and make ‘friends’ with several of the practitioners. Of course, you’ll only be consulting them with regards to your present ‘dilemma’. Of note would be the possibility of the practitioners failing to fully understand the dilemma, due to the significantly different (some would argue higher – they generally stick to the bargain once made) moral plane which they inhabit. Don’t forget the last and most important step, finding lots of ‘It’s all about me’ type scriptural justification for your actions…

Hmmmm. Having over 17 thousand dollars left over post taxes to pay alimony with probably does put one at the higher edge of the middle class. At my tax rate, this amounts to almost $40,000 worth of pre-tax income.

I think traditional marriage is practically dead. For both women and men, we are going to have to renegotiate the meaning of marriage and family. Maybe marriage will become completely irrelevant altogether and some other thing will emerge in its place.
[D: Marriage itself won’t become irrelevant, at least for the middle class and higher. The churches who can’t stand by it do run that risk however.]

@Aquanet
“I think traditional marriage is practically dead. For both women and men, we are going to have to renegotiate the meaning of marriage and family. Maybe marriage will become completely irrelevant altogether and some other thing will emerge in its place.”

And, if so, the SoCons will jump up and down and scream about how gay marriage caused it.

Chels – “Sheila should also address what’s causing him to watch porn. If the reason is because his wife is refusing sex or she wants it rarely, then Sheila should tell women that the man’s actions are completely acceptable”

I think that, especially within a Christian marriage, you might be over-stating it to say “completely acceptable”.

I think that “understandable” might be a better fit for the point you are making.
[And I say that as a proud and unapologetic player for “Team man”]

Women always concoct a cover story when they initiate a divorce; always. It is much more important for them to be seen as the victim rather than the one exploiting the situation, even if that is what is really happening. They do this in part because they are typically banking on the good will of the legal system which has a pro-woman bias. For many women, this is their one and only chance to reap a windfall so they need to keep up appearances. Once they have maximized the payout they are then free to live a solipsistic lifestyle, sometimes with all the assets and full custody. A cover story also helps minimize the social fallout that inevitably impacts relationships with the children, families and close friends.

The easiest way to do this is to simply claim “abuse” even if this means fabricating or exaggerating the story. It sounds a lot better than if she just says she found someone who is better in bed and has more money or that she prefers to live alone because she can control everything in her life and not have to share. Even the most dubious abuse charges will still garner her support from the sisters and latent sympathy from most non-interested parties. Under no-fault divorce, the party initiating the divorce has a big advantage. It is like taking the first punch in a fight. Women, who are overwhelmingly filing the divorces, are much better prepared both legally and emotionally and control the order of battle. Not a very pretty way to look at it but it is accurate.

I think traditional marriage is practically dead. For both women and men,

I became very skeptical of it between about 1965 and 1968. Everyone told me that I was a no-good “Peter Pan” who needed to man up and make a commitment. Interesting to see that more and more women are coming around to my POV. I guess I was ahead of my time. 😉

“The easiest way to do this is to simply claim “abuse” even if this means fabricating or exaggerating the story. It sounds a lot better than if she just says she found someone who is better in bed and has more money or that she prefers to live alone because she can control everything in her life and not have to share.”

I don’t know what country you’re from, but in mine this is precisely what women say when they divorce. Who needs to cover up their real reasons with abuse allegations in America?

“I became very skeptical of it between about 1965 and 1968. Everyone told me that I was a no-good “Peter Pan” who needed to man up and make a commitment. Interesting to see that more and more women are coming around to my POV. I guess I was ahead of my time.”

Believe me, we’re out here, baby. 😉

I draw the line at kids though. I won’t date a single father because I’m dead-set against single parenthood. There’s still a little “traditional” left in me when it comes to family.

“That is also why after a divorce, a man finds it easier to marry a woman younger than his first wife, but most women either cannot re-marry”

What? Aren’t the majority of married people on their 2nd? I’d think that after a divorce, if you are 40 plus and have already had kids, that you wouldn’t want to get re-married in the first place. Remarried for what exactly? One can enjoy the benefits of a relationship (or several) without getting married. Marriage is for young people with the dream of starting a family.

I wrote my post about Team Woman without regard to whether any particular woman was Christian or not. I have not observed much difference in behavior although if anything Christian women use their Churchianity to feel morally justified in their actions. As such Christian women can be more dangerous.

I believe that the most important thing for a man is to evaluate in a woman is if she can be led. Her faith is of little importance in determining her quality as a woman. Women are pliable so if she can be led, she will probably follow the morality of her man and often accept his faith belief or lack of belief if he is a confident man that can lead.

Aqua Net – “Who needs to cover up their real reasons with abuse allegations in America?”

It is done for tactical advantage – especially where child custody will come into play.

Once the allegation is made, the criminal justice system must take it seriously (deep sh*t awaits any who fail to fall all over themselves to “protect” women and children). That means that the man WILL be removed from the home, and placed at a serious disadvantage moving forward. Although there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence, it is almost never afforded to men who have been accused by a woman (who is afforded a presumption of honesty, based primarily on her genitalia), and a man must fight to clear his name in order to get back into the custody game.

Although most such tactical claims are eventually dropped or declined for prosecution, they will still have set the man back financially, further eroding his ability to get the best possible representation for the coming divorce/child custody battles.

And even in cases where no children are involved, it does help the women gain the upper-hand in securing the residence for herself. On Glenn Sacks old site, there were documented accounts of men who owned a home prior to marriage (often a property handed down via inheritance, but sometime fully, or nearly fully paid for prior to the marriage) that ended up being lost to the ex-wife in the divorce settlement (well, actually, she got to keep it, but had to pay him off for his reduced portion of the equity, typically allowing her the course of several years to do so – and with quite few outright defaulting on that obligation, with no further penalization provided by the court which produced the order. A guy would have to file and fund a separate civil court action to seek remedy).

It has even been a successful tactic for women when their boyfriend was the home owner. Sacks also detailed numerous cases of men forced to pay the mortgage while their x-girlfriend got to live in the house he purchased.

Yes, there is a very real incentive for women to allege abuse coincident with break-ups. Just one more way in which the system is rigged against men (and a relative handful of women who also catch the sh*t-end).

My biggest problem with (most) protestant theology on marriage is that it is very all or nothing. Either something is grounds for a divorce and remarriage or the only appropriate action to take is to learn to live with it.

What about separation? I can think of many good reasons why a husband and wife shouldn’t share the same roof and only a few as to why a husband and wife should split permanently.

TFH: “Women are not adults in terms of their moral capacity. The fatal mistake the West made, was to assume that they are adults. In reality, men vote for what benefits all people, but women only vote for what benefits women.”

If one spouse is going through mental problems that makes them very difficult to live with…
or one spouse is spending the other out of house and home (gambling or shopping addiction?)
or one spouse is having an affair and is unwilling to end it
or alcohol/drug addiction

Many problems are temporary but sometimes living under the same roof just creates a cycle that makes the problems last even longer.

I don’t know how everyone works out the financial situation in a separation. That seems like a very different debate. Most the people I know who did it ended up having one spouse stay with a friend or relative.

Most women I know with kids wish they had never had them. Pro-family people base their outmoded ideas on the past when people needed kids to work and bring in income for them and cared for them in old age. That doesn’t happen here in the post-modern West. Kids are drain. A finanical and emotional drain. And they won’t take care of you in old age.

Better to remain single and childless. Work, save your money, travel, see the world.

……in other words, she wants her husband’s money but not his presence. This is Morticia’s ‘idea’ that she wants to discuss.

Oh, I get it now, she left out a word –“I can think of many good reasons why a husband and wife shouldn’t share the same roof and only a few as to why a husband’s paycheck and wife should split permanently.”
😉

I was struck when you commented on “abuse” as a grounds someone cited for divorce. Have you noticed that feminism in general seems to like to take reasonable grounds for something (or at least seemingly reasonable grounds) and then push and push the boundaries until the original thing is distorted beyond recognition.

Two other cases after abuse came to mind are abortion and rape.

Clearly when they talk about “leaving a marriage because of abuse” they want you to think of a husband who beats his wife savagely and she needs to be hospitalized, but then they turn it into “emotional abuse” and it seems that “not putting the toilet seat down” qualifies as “emotional abuse”.

Likewise with rape and abortion you see feminists doing the same thing. They want an exception to laws regulating abortion for the “health of the mother”, and unsurprisingly anything and everything is jammed through that exception on “health grounds” (Oh no, I will put on some weight and get stretch marks during pregnancy, therefore it is ok to kill my child because of health reasons!). You see it also with allegations of rape, where some feminists want to qualify “wolf whistling” as a form of “rape”.

What is it about these women that leads them to take serious issues and real problems and seek to trivialize them?

In practice, if you distort “abuse” to mean pretty much anything the woman doesn’t like, or you trivilize rape to mean “boorish behavior”, or “health” to mean “baby weight” (Note, I am a strict abortion abolitionist and think it is wrong outside of strict triage cases) then you actually harm women who really are abused, or raped or who face a serious risk of death, because people come to treat the serious cases as trivial rather than treating the trivial cases as serious.

But then again, feminists seem to be idiots with zero future time orientation or understanding that reality isn’t optional so I guess it isn’t surprising.

Haven’t read the comments yet, but here are some initial thoughts from the post…..

Regarding porn addiction, key being addiction, and what I don’t get is the very nature of an addiction is something that is beyond the person’s control. Often deep down they don’t want to have that addiction, but it consumes them and blinds any rationality. So, as helpmates, are we to help our husband overcome addictions, get any help that is needed, etc., or do we just chuck them to the side cause he is broken in his sinfulness? If it were the wife who had an addiction to porn (via romance novels especially), gambling, or much more likely shopping (some may take issue with that, but shopping can certainly be a lower severity addiction) would she expect or be pleased if her husband just divorced her over the matter? If he were to leave her, I imagine he would be accused of being heartless and abandoning his wife in her time of need.

Regarding emotional abuse…this is so vague that it can mean anything. The very nature of life can be deemed emotionally abusing. Its easy to say that when going through a very rough time that it was emotionally trying, not much further of a leap to call it emotional abuse just the difference is only men emotionally abuse….your mother or friend “emotionally tries” you.

I was struck when you commented on “abuse” as a grounds someone cited for divorce. Have you noticed that feminism in general seems to like to take reasonable grounds for something (or at least seemingly reasonable grounds) and then push and push the boundaries until the original thing is distorted beyond recognition.

Some DV advocacy organization put out a pamphlet on DV several years ago giving examples of “abuse.” One of the items on the list was the husband not giving the woman enough compliments. Also, “withholding money” from her shoe-shopping addiction counts as abuse. It basically boils down to anything a woman doesn’t like is “abuse.”

That is why so many men (except the manginas and white knights) go into snooze mode as soon as they hear the word “abuse.”

Van Rooinek writes: “If only that were so. Too often, “singles” ministries seem to have an unspoken agenda to keep the singles, single, so they’ll have more freedom to serve the chur… um, the Lord. Anti-dating teaching and similar nonsense abounds. Frankly, I found “singles ministries”, although beneficial in many other respects, ranged from neutral to downright hostile toward my matrimonial hopes.”

Absolutely. In my experience, the singles ministries in evangelical churches succeeded somehow in being bigger goon shows than all but the most pathetic Sunday morning services. They were insulting not only to my manhood but my adulthood. I’ll never forget the group leader who called his wife up to give him a glass of water. Just before drinking it in front of everyone, with his wife standing next to him, he smugly asked a room full of lonely bachelors, “Don’t you wish you had one of these?”

Nevertheless, I found my beautiful, anti-feminist wife on the fringes of one of these groups. I took her and left.

Where is Sheila getting her theology? Is it what her denomination preaches? Her Pastor?

Can’t we discuss ideas without attacking individual people?

The problem is that nearly all Christians still pretend to deeply value marriage and see it as an irrevocable bond. They don’t typically come out and admit they are collaborating with feminism. They are all that one church which really takes marriage seriously, and they would provide low divorce numbers proving it too if only, well, if only… can I get back to you on that?

It is like trying to nail jello to the wall. But here we finally have it out in the open. The movie isn’t some Hollywood blockbuster, it is Christian endorsed for its custom built marital message. And here you can’t say she is just another person on the internet, she writes books and gives speeches to churches on this very topic.

I agree with you that it shouldn’t be about Sheila as a person. But the elaborate smokescreen Christians are hiding behind makes it extremely difficult to hold the other leadership accountable; they are I’m sure just as baffled by the 38% divorce rate amongst devout Christians as anyone else. The strange thing is at some point I think she forgot about the smokescreen, and accidentally wrote down what she and others have been doing to marriage behind the scenes for decades. At some point it stops seeming wrong.

I’ll also point out that I didn’t come hunting after Sheila. I didn’t name her or her blog when I referenced these statements in my review of Fireproof. She came here to argue the moral case for serial polyandry if the wife can dig up a suitable pretense. At some point you have to call people out who dare you to do so. This is especially important because so many men are blinded to it. They desperately want to believe the pretty lie that the church and Christians in general has their marriage’s back.

The problem with helping cure a husband of an addiction is that you can’t really do it without emasculating him. If you take on the “mommy” role and start demanding to know where he is going, what he is doing, what he is spending his money on, etc etc… you’ve already lost because most men hate few things more than they hate having a woman boss them.

I am all for helping a husband overcome addictions but one must realize that the tactics one might take with a child or even a wife are the opposite ones you take with a husband. You can’t hang around and hope that you can nag them into submission.

Depending on the severity of the addiction often the only appropriate action a wife can take is to separate. The husband must decide for himself to give up his addiction if he decides it is worth it to get his wife back.

I think nowadays people get more satisfaction out of blogging than they do their kids. All parents I know say the best years are birth -10 and then from there its all down hill. And oh, they won’t take care of you when you’re old either.

Do we really need more people on this planet? What’s so great about having kids?

A lot of women have no intention of remarrying or even finding a significant other once they have divorced. To them, being single is the improvement.

Being single can have a lot of benefits. You do not have to fight for control values and customs of the family including religion, choice of friends and acquaintances, tastes in lifestyle, food, vacations, etc. It’s all about you and maybe your kid. The struggle for these women is usually where to get money. This is why the government safety net is so critical.

Also, women change hormonally much more than men between the ages of 30 to 50. Many totally lose their sex drive once perimopause and menopause manifests and could care less about men. One reason I married a younger woman my second time around is that at 47 I wanted someone who was sexually compatible. A lot of these women simply go their own way (WGTOW). The only catch is that they want to take the home and hearth with them.

You bring up a legitimate way to deal with certain problems, but given the legal nature of most marriage arraignments and the lack of family near by (for most people), separations are really hard to work. It *is* a good idea, but if one of the spouses has an gambling addiction, for an instance I know of, legal divorce is pretty much the only way to stop the ruin to the family’s finances. A determined spouse has access to the information needed to take out many, many types of credit, for instance.

So, it’s really a situational thing for it to be realistically doable. Though it really should be the first choice for Christians, long before actual divorce becomes an option. It’s much easier to deal with people with a major relationship dysfunction when they’re not seeing each other daily, at least for a few weeks.

As to the “porn = adultery” issue, I went and grabbed my New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. This is pretty much the “student standard” version for a lot of Religious Studies. (It tries to be as word for word as possible) Checking through the annotations for “lust” and “heart”, the plain reading of Matthew 5:28 is that the prohibition is to Idol Worship of a person. (So, yeah, “covet”)

I’d never actually read it that close. That really annoys me, as I’ve gotten the “lustful eyes” stuff quite a lot. Which puts you in a really bad position as a guy. This is one way we cause lots of “nice guys” in Churches. When you equate “looking” as “lusting”, you eventually start lusting after looking, which means you will break down all of the barriers. I kind of want to yell at a few people.

Sidebar: This doesn’t mean looking at porn is blameless. I think porn (physical or textual, for men & women) is sinful. It isn’t, however, grounds for a Church-based, approved Divorce.

The problem is that nearly all Christians still pretend to deeply value marriage and see it as an irrevocable bond. (between a wife and her husband’s paycheck – from which all tithes flow) They don’t typically come out and admit they are collaborating with feminism. They are all that one church which really takes marriage seriously, and they would provide low divorce numbers proving it too if only, well, if only… can I get back to you on that?

It is like trying to nail jello to the wall. But here we finally have it out in the open. The movie isn’t some Hollywood blockbuster, it is Christian endorsed for its custom built marital message. And here you can’t say she is just another person on the internet, she writes books and gives speeches to churches on this very topic.

I don’t particularly like Sheila’s theology on divorce but I don’t think she chose it because she is secretly anti-marriage. It seems to me she is trying to support marriage within the perimeters of the theology she has been taught.
[D: I agree. I don’t think she sees herself as undermining marriage.]

B: As I so love pointing out, the future belongs to those who show up for it. I’m not going to shame anyone for not having kids (male or female), especially since I don’t have any m’self, but in the long run, it’s the folks who leave descendants behind today that will shape the world tomorrow, for better or worse.

@Aqua Net
“How is a porn or romance novel habit an “addiction”? Are there withdrawl symptoms? What are they?”

No idea about romance novels, but porn use (assuming typical use, for the purposes of yanking on yourself till you orgasm) does cause physical pleasure in the user and does make use of all of the biochemical reward systems that the brain has associated with sex. At least to some degree. This can become addicitive in the same way any dopamine (IIRC) producing substance/action can.

And yes there can be withdrawl effects as your body is used to getting a fix and will seek to drive you to get it.

@Morticia
“Depending on the severity of the addiction often the only appropriate action a wife can take is to separate. The husband must decide for himself to give up his addiction if he decides it is worth it to get his wife back.”

From chatting with some AA and NarcAnon people at a conference recently, it seems all addiction of any stripe is like this. You can’t force an addict to quit, they have to want to quit, which often means hitting rock bottom. People are foolish and stubborn like that.

My husband isn’t addicted to internet porn but it is naive to suggest that only those who are deprived develop unhealthy appetites. That would be like saying that fat people just don’t have enough access to vegetables.

Not every porn addict has a sexually unaccommodating wife. Sometimes it is the opposite..the woman wants more sex but her husband doesn’t find real sex as satisfying as masturbating to porn.

I used to work with an extremely bitter man who had been completely screwed in his divorce (no kids, but the wife took everything AND he had to pay alimony). When he found out that I was married he said:

“Why the f**k did you do that? What you should have done was find a random woman you absolutely cannot stand and bought her a house. It’s the same thing.”

“A lot of women have no intention of remarrying or even finding a significant other once they have divorced. To them, being single is the improvement.

Being single can have a lot of benefits. You do not have to fight for control values and customs of the family including religion, choice of friends and acquaintances, tastes in lifestyle, food, vacations, etc. It’s all about you and maybe your kid. The struggle for these women is usually where to get money. This is why the government safety net is so critical.

Also, women change hormonally much more than men between the ages of 30 to 50. Many totally lose their sex drive once perimopause and menopause manifests and could care less about men. One reason I married a younger woman my second time around is that at 47 I wanted someone who was sexually compatible. A lot of these women simply go their own way (WGTOW). The only catch is that they want to take the home and hearth with them.”

YES. YES. YES! Oh God YES! Right there YES!

A man who finally “gets” it. (will get in due time get “it”) 😉

After being divorced and single with kids, the last thing a woman wants is another “kid” to take care of, which is, how a lot of women view men – as a burden they will have to pick up after. Whatever sexual or romantic needs she has can easily be met through casual hook ups or short term flings, which are more than easy to obtain.

Well I’m just home from work and Dalrock you are awesome. You are super beta man that studies and learns and looks for answers. And you found them. It looks like you have taken the time to really look at the psychology and principals of game. You could not have written such a touching piece with out it. Outstanding work.
TFH you are on a roll.

Getting back to the topic, many women are looking for an excuse as a fig leaf when they drop the divorce bomb, even if it is only a pretext. While porn can be addictive, it is also the best thing many women can dig up to justify the fact that they are leaving. When my ex-wife made the decision to leave (which was not shared information) she hired a private investagator to follow me around and also try and look at my computer. What was he looking for? In his / her case nothing, but clearly they were hoping to find something to make me less sympathetic in the sure to follow fight for custody. She wanted sole custody and the only way she could get it was to prove I was unfit, even if I wasn’t.

I gather that being single is harder for men then women. The term “thresold of interaction” is employed when talking about sexbots and dolls for men, whereas women couldn’t care less about “interaction” from their toys, we just want the big O.

Older men want someone to take care of them while older women don’t want to “have to take care of another kid (man)”.

TFH may be doing some projection wrt divorced women.

What exactly is there to gain for a divorced woman (who doesn’t want more kids) in remarriage? More household chores and cooking?

Dalrock, I have a minor correction to note but it is in service of strengthening your case (so please try and make it through the whole proof – also, I’m not sure what formatting you’re using in comments so forgive me if this turns out borderline unreadable)..

If that means conflating viewing pornography with actual adultery, so be it.

See, this comes from the Christian teaching based upon Matthew 5:27-28.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

That’s the first thing that must be kept in mind.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a biblical case backing you up as well. What a lot of Christians seem to be forgetting, is 1 Corinthians 7… well most of 7.

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Which means, when you look at the quoted lines from Fireproof:

Catherine: If looking at that trash is how you get fulfilled, then that is fine. But I will not compete with it.

Caleb: Well, I sure don’t get it from you!

Catherine: And you won’t. Because you care more about saving for your stupid boat and pleasing yourself than you ever did about me.

The wife is the one who broke the vows/deals first.

Exactly why so many churches are reluctant nowadays to encourage couples to do their marriage duties… well, that will have to be addressed by people far wiser than I.

Oh Dalrock, one other thing:
I know you’ve railed on before about the female equivalent of “Promise Keepers” and the such, I think there is being developed something for that:
Apples of Gold (http://www.applesofgold.org/).

Of course, not being a woman I don’t know much about the program, but just a few thing I’ve picked up and just glancing at it, I think might be a small, tiny ray of hope for us.

“I am actually a pickup artists who has done rather well for a long time. You, I am guessing, are a 30+ spinster with a rationalization hamster that is rapidly growing in size.”

I’m 30+ and single. Rationalize what exactly? That I’m not maternal and never wanted kids? Is that someone to apologize for? If you think so, why?

Take your new age post-modern terminology elsewhere. Its not going to work an someone quite possibly old enough to be your mother (but who, thankfully, isn’t).

“Also, women change hormonally much more than men between the ages of 30 to 50. Many totally lose their sex drive once perimopause and menopause manifests and could care less about men.”

I’ll speak to that. When I was young I enjoyed sex within the boundaries of short term romantic flings. I enjoyed the togetherness, bonding, vacations spent together, etc. Now? I couldn’t care less about that. Either give me a non-clingly hot young stud who can get in and out quickly (of my house, not my nether regions, lol) or give me a good fantasy and my ahem, “friend”.

As women age our estrogen drops and our T levels increase, thus making our sexuality more like that of a younger man’s. The opposite takes place in men, hence why older men talk about wanting “relationships” and their “feewings” alot.

That’s why older men and younger women make better relationship partners, and older women and younger men make better BED mates.

The only problem is that some of these young men expect a full course meal when they come to your house. Maybe that’s just a small price to pay for their services.

“India, as a country that has been a democracy for 64 years, is only 10-20 years behind. 5000 years of thought into how to make marriage equitable through intricate customs that demonstrate an excellent understanding of female psychology, is precariously close to going down the tubes. The steep slide into misandry that US Christianity saw from 1991 to 2011 is about to start in India too.”

Is this due to missionary activity? I always thought missionaries were a loathesome lot out to destroy native cultures.

Older men want someone to take care of them while older women don’t want to “have to take care of another kid (man)”.

What exactly is there to gain for a divorced woman (who doesn’t want more kids) in remarriage? More household chores and cooking?

LOL!!! I wish I had you around when I got into an argument with a woman who claims to inhabit the other side of the fence from you. She claimed that a woman who “had never had a man love her” was far more lonely than a man who had never had any relationship at all, and asked me for concrete proof that women didn’t need men to love them.

I would have loved to be able to hand you to her and said – “Here is exhibit A – Aqua Net.”

The strangest thing to me is how many men get so attached to how much women want and need them, in the face of input from women that they don’t. Even our distinguished host here – Dalrock – looks at Kate Bolick’s ambivalent acceptance of where she is in life as a single woman at age 40, and sees all kinds of regret in her that I don’t see.

More than 40 years ago women told me that they needed me like a fish needs a bicycle, and I believed them and incorporated that belief into my life’s plan. I thought it made a lot of sense to structure my own life that I would need a woman like a bicycle needed a fish. It costs me a whole lot less than half my income to have my cooking done and my house cleaned, and I have been a real prick in pointing out to a lot of men that it has cost me a whole lot less for their wives to not sleep with me than it has cost them for their wives to not sleep with them.

What is real strange is all the years I have had to live through the harassment to do what you say that women don’t much want – marry them.

We all know what guys like that are called – “Peter Pans.” Isn’t it strange that we don’t have a term for women who really don’t want to get married, either?

“She claimed that a woman who “had never had a man love her” was far more lonely than a man who had never had any relationship at all, and asked me for concrete proof that women didn’t need men to love them.”

Well, that might be true for a woman who has NEVER experienced a relationship, I wouldn’t know. I’m talking here about the women I know – all of who’ve had relationships galore, or marriage, from their 20s on, and are done with it (but not neccessarily done with a good shag every now and then, hence, Cougar Town).

Zed, I completely agree with you on everything you wrote in your last comment.

I’ve yet to meet all these 50+ divorcees who are just howling at the moon for the chance to be able to marry again. And that too to an old man they would have to take care of throughout his viagra and disease ridden years.

, in the face of input from women that they don’t. Even our distinguished host here – Dalrock – looks at Kate Bolick’s ambivalent acceptance of where she is in life as a single woman at age 40, and sees all kinds of regret in her that I don’t see. ”

Zed, they are religious and conservative and move in religious and conservative circles.

“The strangest thing to me is how many men get so attached to how much women want and need them, in the face of input from women that they don’t. Even our distinguished host here – Dalrock – looks at Kate Bolick’s ambivalent acceptance of where she is in life as a single woman at age 40, and sees all kinds of regret in her that I don’t see. ”

Zed, there was a big disconnect for me also but then I realized that they move in religious and/or conservative circles and are somewhat sheltered.

Aqua Net says:
November 8, 2011 at 5:56 pm
“I am actually a pickup artists who has done rather well for a long time. You, I am guessing, are a 30+ spinster with a rationalization hamster that is rapidly growing in size.”

I’m 30+ and single. Rationalize what exactly? That I’m not maternal and never wanted kids? Is that someone to apologize for? If you think so, why?

Take your new age post-modern terminology elsewhere. Its not going to work an someone quite possibly old enough to be your mother (but who, thankfully, isn’t).

“Also, women change hormonally much more than men between the ages of 30 to 50. Many totally lose their sex drive once perimopause and menopause manifests and could care less about men.”

I’ll speak to that. When I was young I enjoyed sex within the boundaries of short term romantic flings. I enjoyed the togetherness, bonding, vacations spent together, etc. Now? I couldn’t care less about that. Either give me a non-clingly hot young stud who can get in and out quickly (of my house, not my nether regions, lol) or give me a good fantasy and my ahem, “friend”.

As women age our estrogen drops and our T levels increase, thus making our sexuality more like that of a younger man’s. The opposite takes place in men, hence why older men talk about wanting “relationships” and their “feewings” alot.

That’s why older men and younger women make better relationship partners, and older women and younger men make better BED mates.

The only problem is that some of these young men expect a full course meal when they come to your house. Maybe that’s just a small price to pay for their services.

This is a full quote from Aqua Net.
Aqua Net i’m greyghost and I like your style here. My goal as an MRA type is to get as many women as possible into childless spinsterhood. And I think you are beautiful. Your ideas and way of life are great and will make the world a better place. together I think we can undermine this Dalrock guy and should join forces with PUA’s and MGTOW types and make this a world you can love and be happy in. I really appreciate meeting someone here on the blog that is so in tune with my own gaols as a man.

TFH, I read Dalrock’s article and its a pure opinion piece using phrases like, “It has been my personal observation” and, “My own sense on this is…”.

He specifically points out that in his research he has been unable to find any data, “At any rate, as I said I can’t find any studies which confirm this one way or another.” And even goes so far as to ask us, his readers, to dig up data.

Moreover, the only chart he provides is one which tracks married women by age, to which Dalrock adds, “I think this data pretty well dispels the idea that women are wired to prefer to divorce and live alone later in life. ”

It is not nor has it ever been my argument that older married would prefer to be divorced and live alone. My point is, and has always been that older women who ARE divorced would prefer not to marry AGAIN.

“I think this data pretty well dispels the idea that women are wired to prefer to divorce and live alone later in life. ”

You are arguing with WHO here exactly because I NEVER said “women are wired to PREFER divorce and live alone later in life”.

I said that women who ARE divorced (whether they prefer being or not) prefer to live alone and not GET MARRIED AGAIN.

Please note that I’m not saying they prefer to not date, not have sex, not have boyfriends etc. The Villages, which is a prominant and wellknown retirement community in Florida, has high std rates. Make no bones about it, old women are getting their freak on. They just DON’T to want to live with the men they are gettin’ jiggy widdit with and have to live out their last decades being a maid, nurse and cook to a sick, dying man.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Greyghost,
“Aqua Net i’m greyghost and I like your style here. My goal as an MRA type is to get as many women as possible into childless spinsterhood. And I think you are beautiful. Your ideas and way of life are great and will make the world a better place. together I think we can undermine this Dalrock guy and should join forces with PUA’s and MGTOW types and make this a world you can love and be happy in. I really appreciate meeting someone here on the blog that is so in tune with my own gaols as a man.”

Glad to be of help, GG. I’m partial to the PUA community because I have a soft spot for suave young men. 😉 I’m not here to “undermine” anyone though, and especially not the blog host. I have a traditional streak in me when it comes to (other people’s) kids. I think as long as you have kids you have to put them first, above your own personal happiness. Those of us without kids though? We are the sole, rightful heirs to the libertine advantage.

As an “MRA type” maybe you can explain to me why they want to herald in an age of artifical wombs? Why the heck would a man want to have kids and be a single parent? I don’t get it.

“God ordained the man to be the head of the home and the High Priest of the family. My husband wasn’t the leader the family needed, and though he was a good man, his lack of biblical leadership was a stumbling block in our children’s spiritual development. I didn’t want a divorce, but I felt I had to in order to give my children the biblical upbringing they deserve.”

She was dating her coworker before the divorce was finalized. He wasn’t even a Christian.

“I know the Bible says that wives should submit to their husbands, but it also says that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. I didn’t feel loved. ”

She found love with the Head (heh) Deacon before she filed for divorce. When the Pastor discovered it a year later after she was appointed to a leadership position, he asked them both to resign. She then started a rumor that the Pastor made sexual advances towards her. He’s in his late 70’s, never been accused of anything inappropriate in his 54 years of ministry, and yet this will be his legacy.

“God allowed divorce in the Bible when Moses insisted. I know it was only excused in cases of infidelity, but in a way, my husband was unfaithful to us by working so much. How can he be a father and the head of this household if he’s working 7 days per week? He basically abandoned us for his business.”

She took half of the business and ran it into the ground. He’s now working even more to regain his financial status while paying her child support. She’s shacking up with her ex husband’s brother.

“Dr. XYZ always takes the man’s side. He can counsel us if he wants, but I’m not letting that loser back in the house until he promises to start doing half of the household duties.”

She is a part time substitute school teacher working two days per week; he is a middle manager in the finance department at General Motors. This saga is still playing out.

“There’s no way that’s what the Bible means. I’m not happy, and I deserve to be.”

She learned the hard way that men don’t line up to keep a 44 year old fat chick with two teenage kids happy. It’s ok though, God is just testing her right now…

Great article, Dalrock. I’m not a believer, and I only attend church because it’s politically and socially advantageous to do so, so let me give you an outsider’s point of view. There are three types of women in the church:

1. Reformed hard core party girl whores with a past that would make your eyes cross: 20%
2. Decent women who are not in any way, shape or form different than girls outside of the church other than their rationalization hamster can quote scripture: 75%
3. Social retards or ugly girls who don’t fit in out in the real world, so they find a place at church: 5%

Type 3 stands out like a sore thumb, but you can’t tell the difference between types 1 and 2 and that should scare the piss out men. You have the same chance of pulling a “good girl” out of a bar on Friday night at 1:45 a.m. as you do pulling one out of a sanctuary on Sunday at 11:45 a.m.

NOTE: I attend a mega church that’s kind of like Six Flags Over Jesus, so it’s a pretty large sample size.

PT Barnum, I already said about 50 comments ago that I work with seniors. If these women wanted to shack up with the old men in their retirement communities and offer them free maid, nurse and cooking services, believe me, they could.

Look, I already know that I’m in the minority – both on this blog and in the world. 99% of the young-middle aged people I meet want to be “in relationship”. 90% want to be married. 85% want to have kids. I don’t get those longings but I realize I’m an outlier.

Nobody has answered my question yet: whats so great about having kids?

I do sympathize with Sheila because I have been in her shoes. The people around here will very quickly decide that a person is “the enemy” with little interest in really debating the ideas they are presenting. Once someone gets categorized meaningful conversation stops.

Sheila strikes me as pretty open-minded on her blog. She entertains other peoples interpretations of scripture. I think a discussion of the topic could have been beneficial if people were not so knee-jerk in their reactions.

Unlike a lot of you here I think a person can be wrong and not irredeemably hopeless.

Dalrock was attacking Ms. Gregoire’s stance, not Ms. Gregoire; he went to great pains to make that clear. But for those who don’t want to see, they won’t. React react react don’t think just react defend one of our own!

PT Barnum, I already said about 50 comments ago that I work with seniors. If these women wanted to shack up with the old men in their retirement communities and offer them free maid, nurse and cooking services, believe me, they could.

Now, did I say shack up? Another thing women that lie are good at is playing word games. Those older women don’t MARRY the older men BECAUSE THEY CANNOT. When they can, as I have observed, they do.

But I’ll have to just believe your claim that the inability to get what they want is the same as not wanting it.

I am not just talking about Dalrock but of several of the commenters as well. But even in the original post I think some of the logical leaps were unjustified, such as this one:

if your wife decides to divorce you for another man, there will be well respected Christians lining up to justify her decision and place all of the blame on you.

Sheila said in her comment that she thought a woman shouldn’t divorce for pornography but that she thought it was a Scripturally valid option. Which means the issue is with her theology and not with her PERSONAL attitude towards the subject. Her personal opinion is that women should not divorce for this reason and that there are very few reasons to divorce. This is what I read..it was clear in her comment.. but everyone else seems to have skipped over it as irrelevant.

[D: She justified the decision, claiming viewing porn was grounds for divorce. Then she put all of the blame on the man “He’s the one who cheated!”. The question was is it moral for a woman to swing from husband to husband on the slightest pretense. She answered that it was. The rest is just smoke.]

“When I used to look at my dad’s Playboy magazines when I was 15, I had not realized I was committing adultry. I thought I was choking the chicken.”

Only married people can commit adultery. What you were doing might qualify as “shameful” in some churches. Heck, I think there’s even a sect or two that considers masturbation of all things to be a “sin”.

I used to go to the erotic lit sections of book stores and quickly browse through the pages til I got to the really juicy parts (without my mom seeing, she was in the cook book section), and then go home and use what I read as fodder. This started when I was probably 11.

According to one or 2 nuttier sects that would have been both shameful and sinful. Kids just can’t win.

1) Husband and wife, both professionals, no children. Stakes not nearly high enough.
2) Husband not a Christian at the outset. Unequal yoking on her part.
3) No mention of what the 40-day program actually entailed (not that I ever saw anyway)
4) An Alpha fire chief with no female pursuers? (Not that Kirk Cameron is alpha but you get the idea)
5) Turns out it was Kirk’s Dad who was about to leave his marriage, not Mom. So Mom couldn’t go talk to Mrs. Kirk? It’s not as if Kirk wasn’t unsatisfied about some things in his marriage too.

Typical Christian fluff. Guys are lustful brutes and Girls are the civilizing force. (Actually, it isn’t specifically Christian in that regard is it?)

As an “MRA type” maybe you can explain to me why they want to herald in an age of artifical wombs? Why the heck would a man want to have kids and be a single parent? I don’t get it.
This is a question from Aqua Net
To avoid having the state in the name of some woman take them from him. This Blog and the blog of Ms. Gregoire are there to discuss ways to stop that from happening. Well see the arguements and trouble that causes. Take the woman out of the loop and you have no problems . One more thing to notice about an MRA vs a feminist.(or a christian woman in general)
An MRA (man) will desire and hav3e achild on his own and will come up with a way to have a child to love and raise with security of not having him taken from him that does not involve involuntarily taking a the child from a woman and forcing her to pay for it. That is what women do. Nice and considerate guys thoughs MRA’s. I would like for my daughter to fall madly in love with someone that took consideration for others like that.
I hope that answered your question.

The fact of the matter, Morticia, is, that notwithstanding that she personally wouldn’t be in favour (how gracious), the fact she thinks that Scripture, God’s Word, has nothing to say against a wife reacting in such a manner, is the more important point, because it is to Scripture that Christians, particularly Protestants, go, to find what is and what is not permissible, not to what you or I or Ms. Gregoire may think; BUT if some people hear a respected author say there is nothing unScriptural about a woman reacting that way, that’s all they may need to off and run and do like the wife in Fireproof…

“But I’ll have to just believe your claim that the inability to get what they want is the same as not wanting it.
Those grapes are sour, eh?”

No sour grapes. There’s nothing in it for them but waiting on old sick men like unpaid nurses, maids and cooks. Now if these men were considerably younger than the women and waiting on their wives in their sick years, that would be one thing. But women who have been waiting hand and food on family for decades do not want to be doing that in their “golden years”.

Would you?

What does an old woman have to gain by marrying a man even older than she is? Nada.

And of course just like nobody can answer “whats so great about having kids?” I suspect nobody will be able to answer, “whats so great about an old woman marrying an even older man?”

I am assuming Sheila gets her theology from respected sources such as her specific denomination or her pastor (otherwise her theological beliefs would more closely match her personal preferences). I don’t think she looks through the Bible looking for ways for women to rationalize divorce.

The fact that there are serious doctrinal differences on divorce between all the different Christian denominations is the issue that Sheilas comment brought to light. An issue that is worth discussing.

Aqua Net
Nobody has answered my question yet: whats so great about having kids? 30 my ass TFH this chick is like 17.
Going into the living room and seeing the mini blinds all bent up. Sitting on the coffee table putting on your work boots as you cuss at Toni Romo and having your stuck to the table when you get up to go to work. spend 150 bucks getting them into Six Flags over Texas only to have them cry for four hours because they don’t want to go on any rides (scared) and every other day since then ask with a big ole smile “are we going to go to Six Flags?” Waiting in line for hour and a half for the pictur with Santa Clause only to have them go into full screaming terror crying at the close sight of the fella. Mine aren’t driving yet I have a few years to go for that so i don’t have the wrecked cars and beer cans stories yet.

Childless spinsterhood that is the goal. You and me Aqua Net,and oh hell that christian lady Ms. Gregoire can join us and get those ladies single. As zed said bicycles and fish don’t mix.

Aqua Net I don’t know about all men but enough men have committed suicide and murder over having their childen taken from them. Most men today couldn’t give have a shit about women but will tolerate thier wife because they love their child. If men didn’t love their children they would just be PUA and wouldn’t bother tolerating this feminist crap from women. Dalrock wouldn’t be here either,hell I wouldn’t even be here.

“I am assuming Sheila gets her theology from respected sources such as her specific denomination or her pastor (otherwise her theological beliefs would more closely match her personal preferences).”

If she belongs to a sect that believes masturbation is a sin, then believing that watching porn constitutes “adultery” is perfectly logical.

Let’s face it. Much of religion is just plain kooky.

“Childless spinsterhood that is the goal.”

I’m an outlier. The vast majority of people are slaves to their feewings, biological drives and kooky metaphysical “teachings”, so no, I wouldn’t recommend a rational path as the “goal” for most people.

Morticia
Base female hypergamy is what guides Sheila’s Theology. Infact it is her theology. The title Christian for a woman is a status marker. a credential so to speak to claim moral virtrue. That is as far as it goes for AWALT it is normal. Without checks a woman will go feral. Simple adult responsibility is a check. Feminism is the removal of checks. Reality is a check on hypergamy. The government through laws of misandry will do what it can to remove thoughs checks. Happiness will be hers

who cares about divorce if there are no kids involved. If there are kids involved, the courts should award automatic father custody. If father can’t deal with the kids, then they go to mother, and he pays her child support. With this sort of rigor in the marriage contract, walk-away wives would be scarce as unicorns, whether Christian or otherwise. Many women will object to such terms in a marriage contract, but then this will be a good indicator that the woman doesn’t really trust her man, or wedding vows, and is is a better fit to be either a single mother or a shack-up.

I am assuming Sheila gets her theology from respected sources such as her specific denomination or her pastor (otherwise her theological beliefs would more closely match her personal preferences). I don’t think she looks through the Bible looking for ways for women to rationalize divorce.

I don’t know why you keep going back to this. Sheila is a Christian leader. Churches invite her to speak on the topic of marriage. She specifically speaks to women. I didn’t include a link in the original post but since you keep bringing her up as some poor sheep lead astray, check out her website. While there, you may want to book a time to have her come speak at your church. Then go to Amazon.com and see her books. Then check out her blog for married women. Then check out her youtube content. She a giver of doctrine, not some ordinary woman lead astray by a rogue pastor.

And this isn’t a case of rogue doctrine. What she says is what is practiced in 90% of the churches. They just don’t tend to say this kind of thing out loud.

“Aqua Net, I think the guys are just messing with you to get a laugh, but do you have any idea how pathetic you sound?”

Most people think rationality is pathetic because they are slaves to their feewings, biological drives and kooky metaphysical teachings.

Its not rational to have kids. Its based purely on feewings and biological drives. Debating whether porn is adultery or not is asanine because its based upon kooky metaphysical teachings that say masturbation is a sin. You really expect a cult that says masturbation is a sin to NOT say something equally as kooky like “porn is adultery”?

Better you start living your lives according to rationality then what a cult tells you.

Christian or not, the sad fact remains that it is the culture that is at the root of the problem. American women WANT divorce—whether they admit or not; whether they spout religious-sounding platitudes about it or not. The divorce rate speaks for itself.

Like you rightly pointed out on another post: our culture does NOT teach women to value men. At best, they only see us as ‘sperm donors’ and ‘bill payers’; and resent us for needing us for even that little. Men are utterly expendable in this culture and women feel ashamed of responsible men and turn to pursuing deadweight males who make them feel superior.

Oy I’m having a really hard time taking you seriously, and I know I shouldn’t engage with you, but here goes—men are great, having a relationship with one of them is extremely fulfilling , and I imagine that so is being a parent (guess what? men also put up with women’s flaws). Therefore, I’ll pick something based on “feewings and biological drives” any day over something based on selfishness and idiocy.

You’re just a bitter, old broad with a strong rationalization hamster who can’t see past her nose (can’t believe I’m about to agree with TFH). Disgusting.

Morticia,
Until I know of ONE (only ONE is needed) Christian/Catholic woman that has challenged my supposedly Catholic ex-wife for the shit that she pulled, I will not come to the defense of women.

Christian/Catholic women waffle and hamsterize profusely. It is abusive of children. I am restricted from my children and not a SINGLE woman has done ANYTHING. It is put up or shut up time and men are fed up with the placating. I don’t much care if no one likes me. The well being of my children is at stake and Team Woman is routinely opposing what is best for my children because Team Woman always placates and consoles the FEELINGS of other women.

(My post is now at the bottom of the Google search for the term “Team Woman”, please assist in this going viral by clicking the link to get it higher, not for me but for the fatherless children and to get the message out to give hope to separated fathers that have aching hearts.)

Man Aqua Net you need to start a cult and get 30 million female followers past their years of fertility. And i’ll do my part and organize a cult of aqua net sevice men that will allow your cult members to enjoy the freedoms and fun of the cock carousel on their journey to infertility and spinsterhood.

Greyghost:
‘Nobody has answered my question yet; what is so great about having kids?’
Unfortunately, to the majority of women, children are only tools to self-serving ends; just like men are. The abortion rate shows just how little women actually value children when there’s nobody else around to pay for them. I’d be willing to bet that if men stopped paying so-called ‘child support’, the abortion rate would go up at least 400%, easily.

Anon@750:
Actually, it’s usually not until someone BETTER comes along—almost every divorce I’ve ever seen was for someone a lot worse. It’s another way that these bitches get off on emasculating men; rejecting us brutally for the types of males that any real man would despise and flaunting it in our faces. And, if a marriage is involved, she has the added satisfaction of forcing the man to pay for it too; and maybe have his kids besides.

GG and Chels, I’m fully aware that I’m an outlier and most people are not highly rational. It has its drawbacks because people assume we’er unempathetic, which is untrue. We just see the world differently. I still don’t get where this “rationalization hamster” comes in. It must be a pop culture meme that you’re used to applying, probably to women who put their feewings and biological drives first. A highly rational person has nothing to rationalize because our behaviour is ALREADY RATIONAL. People who act on their feewings, biological drives or metaphysical kookiness (ever hear of apologetics?) and then have to back track are the ones who need to rationalize after the fact because they failed to use rationality to beginwith.

Put your cute little internet memes on the shelf, boys and girls. I’m not a divorced single parent or unwed baby mama.

Nobody has answered my question yet: whats so great about having kids?

My neighbors have a little son, 2 years old, who has had some physical difficulties and as a result is a bit delayed, esp. verbally. My neighbor and I garden together and my son will entertain hers while we dig and weed and harvest. Over and he will fall on the ground for this little boy to make him laugh. He’ll help him push his little car up the hill so the boy can push it down and then he will pretend like the car ran him over and he is now mortally injured. Or he will chase him around and around the garden and get him good and tired out.

The other day I took my son and two of his friends up there while I cleaned out the area for the fall (they took the last of the season’s half rotten tomatoes and had a great time flinging them against rocks and bombing each other). As they passed my neighbor’s house, he said to his friends, “A baby lives here, well, a little boy. I have to teach him. I kinda like teaching him.”

“Aqua Net, put a sock in it already. We already know how superior you are; no need to keep hammering away.”

I never said purely rational behaviour and outlook is superior to irrational behaviour or a mix of rational and irrational. In fact, at this point I’d say it has more drawbacks than benefits in the culture I live in.

Eric
About the kids thing. Applying what we know about women a reason for women to have kids is to get the status of mother. There are others that come with it. but if no others pay for it,welfare,daycare , CS,time off from work, etc. Also what you have on the subject is also true.
The list I gave to Aqua to answer her question was my reasons.(not all inclusive though)
Your thoughts on divorce has too much logic. Divorce gets rid of the obligation and keeps the money and meal tickets (children,hostages). It is all pure hypergamy and the joy of the gina tingle however it comes. Do not try to use male logic on this. It doesn’t matter if he or she is good or bad or a delusional alpha charater she thinks could be just around the next bend. hypergamy and her entitled happiness rules all. Logic and making sense need not apply

I really think marriage is quickly on its way out, even amongst the highly irrational and followers of metaphysical teachings. As someone said above, kids have been a status symbol in some societies but in a post-modern world there is no status in parenthood. Why bother? Feewings? OK I’ll concede to that. But is monogamous marriage the only way to raise kids? And no I’m not talking about Big Government here, but a more expanded approach to the meaning of relationship and family.

Lets expands our minds and see if we can come up with alternatives to marriage and divorce slavery while still providing a decent environment for kids to grow up in.

“We can already see that happening with Islam. I would say Islam is about 30 years behind Christian socons WRT being feminized, although I bet that Islam will catch up quickly.”

some rationalists think metaphysical teachings are on their way out and a golden age of rationalism will prevail from about 2100 onward. Who knows? You’d think with all the advances we’ve made in science that that would already have come to pass.

Aqua Net look at what you said here “GG sounds like marriage is a bad rap for men and if they were rational beings they would walk away from it en masse. Maybe that’s too much for me to expect?”
Now think back to the question you ask about MRA types and why the wanted artificial wombs. You just answered your own question.

Zed
AWALT put a different name on her and you get the same. Strong women think the same bullshit.

“Aqua Net look at what you said here “GG sounds like marriage is a bad rap for men and if they were rational beings they would walk away from it en masse. Maybe that’s too much for me to expect?”
Now think back to the question you ask about MRA types and why the wanted artificial wombs. You just answered your own question.”

Doesn’t follow. If men walk away from marriage en masse, why on god’s green earth would they want to bog down their uncomplicated and free lives with having a kid and being a single parent?

I found the bit about people who stick through the tough times ending up happier rather fascinating, as it reflects the experience of my parents. They struggled a lot and both have been diagnosed with depression (my mother medicates, my father tries to control his through lifestyle choices). There were many points at which people would have justified a divorce because of abuse or other “unacceptable circumstances.”

But I’ll tell you what–all of us kids are much better off for them sticking it out and not calling it quits, even at the worst of times. And many would say that because there was physical abuse of us children, that that simply is not possible. If my mom had turned my dad in to CPS we would have a much darker tale to tell, as strange as that may sound.

“Indeed. In a postmodern world, the only “reasons” for having kids, are (a) religion, or (b) racism. Hence those 2 tendencies will dominate the future.”
Then you foresee humanity becoming even more irrational in the future, despite our scientific gains? Interesting.

As a PhD Chemist I am the very first person to tell you, that science AIN’T EVERYTHING. The so-called “nonrational” stuff is the reason WHY people live, love, breed, and die in battle. Science can only explain the technical aspects, it cannot answer the ultimate “why”.

@Aqua Net
“some rationalists think metaphysical teachings are on their way out and a golden age of rationalism will prevail from about 2100 onward. Who knows? You’d think with all the advances we’ve made in science that that would already have come to pass.”

“I found the bit about people who stick through the tough times ending up happier rather fascinating, as it reflects the experience of my parents. They struggled a lot and both have been diagnosed with depression (my mother medicates, my father tries to control his through lifestyle choices). There were many points at which people would have justified a divorce because of abuse or other “unacceptable circumstances.”

But I’ll tell you what–all of us kids are much better off for them sticking it out and not calling it quits, even at the worst of times. And many would say that because there was physical abuse of us children, that that simply is not possible. If my mom had turned my dad in to CPS we would have a much darker tale to tell, as strange as that may sound.”

Appearantly once kids get into the “system” they experience MORE abuse, even more sexual abuse, than if they would have never gone in to beginwith. I’ve seen documentaries that caused even a “cold hearted” person like me to cry buckets of tears.

“As a PhD Chemist I am the very first person to tell you, that science AIN’T EVERYTHING. The so-called “nonrational” stuff is the reason WHY people live, love, breed, and die in battle. Science can only explain the technical aspects, it cannot answer the ultimate “why”.

I can buy that. I’m not against metaphysics per se. What I’m against is people trying to present it as anything more than a conscious lifestyle choice because it makes them feel good or “works for them”… like a form of cognitive behavioural therapy. As long as they can keep their rationality about them and admit that their myths cannot be proven scientifically but they choose to believe in them anway because, well, they like them and get some inspirational feelings from them, I’m ok with it.

I do recognize that metaphysical feelings gave rise to some great literature, architecture, art and other civilizational progess. I mean, just look at ancient Egyptian. All inspired by metaphysical feelings.

(Parents staying together even though depressed)But I’ll tell you what–all of us kids are much better off for them sticking it out and not calling it quits, even at the worst of times. And many would say that because there was physical abuse of us children, that that simply is not possible. If my mom had turned my dad in to CPS we would have a much darker tale to tell, as strange as that may sound.

I’ve pointed out before a long term study of children born in the 1920’s in the US, the Longevity study. One fact stood out starkly: “divorced parents” was a very strong indicator of shorter lifespan in children. It was stronger than anything else. Anything else. As has been said here and elsewhere, if there was a disease, viral or bacterial, that did to children what divorce &/or single parenthood does, an entire month would be set aside to raise money to find a cure.

MorticiaDalrock- I pegged her for a female motivational speaker which I see as distinct from the role of a pastor or theologian.

From what I can tell the line between “motivational speaker” and “pastor” is pretty thin nowadays. Joel Osteen comes to mind. Some people I know consider Rick Warren to be a motivational speaker and nothing more (fighting words in some churches, probably). With more feminized churches accepting women preachers, the line gets blurry that way as well. Bizarre theology like the “prosperity gospel” that I finally did a search on the other day blurs lines a lot of ways. I’m pretty sure that churches should look different from Amway or pyramid schemes, but not everyone seems to be in agreement on that.

Maybe a more accurate thing to say is that a woman motivational speaker ought to be distinct from the role of pastor or theologian.

And in any event, Mrs. Gregoire seems to have a lot of people willing to pay to have her come speak. That’s significant right there; if enough people are willing to pay to hear you, either you are entertaining, or they agree with you. Or maybe a bit of both, to be sure.

“Prosperity Gospel” maybe someone can answer this for me. I’ve met quite a number of folk who talk about it but my impression is that Christianity is about making your life as materially simple as possible so as to free up your time and energy to “serve the lord” and that one should not covet things of this world and materialism is bad. Where exactly would “prosperity gospel” fit in? The people I know who talk about it say if you’re not wealthy then you aren’t “right with god”.

Bwaahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
When middle income old men die, whatever bit of “wealth” they have goes to their kids and grandkids, not some old broad they married at the age of 84.

You don’t spend very much time around old ladies and you don’t know how they think do you? Remember, I work with seniors.

First, one thing everyone should know about people who “work in” some area is what that really means is they have a vested interest in wildly lying about the true conditions of their industry. For example, ask a college professor about the value of a college degree. So anyone who starts the “I work in so I know” should be immediately suspect.

Another thing about Female Liars, they just simply do not stop. You can call them on it, but they simply will never admit to anything, ever. I personally know one old woman who managed to get her money train and milk it for over 40,000 dollars at death. In addition to having her life “fixed” while the older husband was still alive. Mind you, it may have been more than 40,000 dollars. Like most thieves, old women are cagey with the facts.

Also, the fact that you make the wild claim that most oldsters today are concerned about “leaving money behind for their kids and grandkids”… I mean really? I’m supposed to believe that?

Most oldsters today sink it all into medical costs to live one additional week.

“Also, the fact that you make the wild claim that most oldsters today are concerned about “leaving money behind for their kids and grandkids”… I mean really? I’m supposed to believe that?

Most oldsters today sink it all into medical costs to live one additional week.”

And yet you want me to believe they are leaving wealth to old broads they married in their 70s?
I mean really? I’m supposed to believe that?

Man, you really just made my argument for me there. No wonder your name is associated with a circus.

Dalrock, I clicked on your embedded link to your blog about sheila’s v-log and mjay left a comment I agree with;
“Instead of trying to preserve a dead, outdated custom, society should move on. The reanimation of marriage in Christian and MRA circles is an anomaly, a sad attempt at maintaining an institution that is dead and hollowed out inside.
Let it go.”

Oh ok, I engaged a troll who spends his time trolling blogs to counter women, even when those women agree with what men say, just to be counter women for its own sake, even if the woman’s argument would benefit him in terms of getting MORE sex. Folks I give you PT Barnum and Bailey Circus who, contrary to tens of dozens of comments here and countless comments on mens’ blogs, that say the frequency of relationship sex is NOT up to the level of mens expectations:

Sandy says:
“One of the sensible translations of Matt 5:28 based on original meanings of greek and hebrew words before translation into English translates it as “That whosoever looketh on a woman (married to other man) to covet after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

That translation makes perfect sense and can be followed in the modern world”

This is exactly correct. The word “lust” in the older English translations is the Greek “epithumia.” It does in fact equate to covet and actually means “very strong desire.” You are also correct that the woman in question is married, since the Bible defines the act of adultery as a man copulating with another man’s wife. Jesus was the one who introduced the concept of a man committing adultery against his wife, but Jesus defined it as a man who divorces his blameless wife and replaces her with another, presumably younger, hotter, and more fertile woman. Notice it is not adultery if the man merely adds the younger, hotter, fertile woman to his harem; it’s casting his blameless wife out onto the street without any support that makes replacing her adultery. A reframing and elaboration of Old Testament directives to keep faith with the “wife of thy youth.”

This kind of willful distortion of scripture to guilt-trip people for things that are not sin has a long history going back to the first mid-second century Christian heretical cults, such as the Montanists. Then it really gets wild when truly sick puppies like the Churchian Fathers, such as Jerome, take the stage. He taught that young Christian ladies should avoid going to the baths, not to avoid being nude in public as moderns might think, but rather so they’d stink so bad no man would want to marry them. He also taught that marital sex was adultery if the man was too passionate about his wife. Fortunately, the Puritans finally came along and got things loosened up.

I thought the idea of trolling for gina tingles was funny. I’ve often wondered why married women with kids would spend time commenting on male oriented blogs. Now I know why.

The more I read here and other mens blogs the more it becomes obvious that more should become like me and rationally go their own way. What do they have to gain from marriage? Long sexual dry spells, sometimes lasting years. Nagging, bitchy wives and spoiled bratty kids who will not take care of them in old age. And the ever looming possibility of divorce and child support hovering over his head and heart at all times.

Better to just learn game, become a PUA and get punani whenever you want or need it.

As far as women, doesn’t seem to be much in it for them either, considering they get bored with their husbands so quickly. And women write their hormones swing up and down with pregnancy and childbirth leaving them completely disinterested in sex.

I have a low libido and couldn’t imagine being expected to have sex every day, or even every week at this point. If I was married I might have to! Right now I don’t have to have sex ever unless I want it and when I want it, which is no more than once or twice monthly, I can masturbate or easily find a willing and casual partner. I can’t imagine being locked into a lifetime relationship where I would be expected to perform regularly into my old age. Yuck!

With all this being said I completely do not understand why either men OR women bother with marriage at all. The only reasonable explanation would be kids, but do you honestly think that THAT many people REALLY want to have them?

“Death does not stop karma. “You” will have to go back and back until you understand that.”

More irrational woo-woo. But even if reincarnation is true, what makes you think I’ll come back into this same society and culture, or even this same universe? You do realise that Hinduism, the belief system from which karma sprang, believes in life on other planets, right?

Let me be honest, I never ‘got’ protestant views on divorce. And I don’t get Sheila, either.

I was raised catholic. In catholicism, marriage is a sacrament and cannot be undone. It can be annulled, but an annulment says that a *marriage* never took place, and therefore the sacrament never happened, and the marriage never happened.

There are four ways in which a marriage can be annulled: 1. one or both parties did not consent to the marriage; 2. one or both parties wasn’t old enough to fully consent to the marriage; 3. one or both parties had no intention to remain faithful; and 4. one or both parties were not open to having children at the time of the marriage.

The catholic church allows for civil divorce and separation, understanding that sometimes marriages don’t work out or have abuse or other very valid reasons to no longer co-habitate and raise children together. Adultery, abuse, and so on are valid reasons for civil divorce, but not annulment — and therefore even if you are divorced, spiritually speaking, you are *still married*.

And if you remarry (civilly, as the church will not remarry you), then. . . you are an adulterer.

The scriptures bear this out over and over and over and over and over. Jesus says it. Paul says it. Even in the apparently misunderstood Matthew 19:7-9 verse, Jesus reiterates that divorcing — even though the exception existed under the Law of Moses for pragmatic reasons — is adultery.

I think that this just always made sense to me, because marriage is sacred. So is my body, and the sexuality that I have, and that I share with my husband. And how even more sacred is our child?

I cannot look at my son and not see something sacred, and in looking at him and seeing something so very sacred, how could i let lust get in my way? And yes, even lust for “being true to myself.”

I wish more “christian women” of protestant ilk would look at how fundamentally valuable this catholic perspctive is for them and their children.

—

That aside, I think it’s possible to be “true to yourself” and married, particularly if you are not a nit-wit, and I also think it’s possible to work through pretty much any stupidness that any party could put forth. I’ve seen it happen, so why divorce?

What I’m against is people trying to present it as anything more than a conscious lifestyle choice because it makes them feel good or “works for them”… like a form of cognitive behavioural therapy. As long as they can keep their rationality about them and admit that their myths cannot be proven scientifically but they choose to believe in them anway because, well, they like them and get some inspirational feelings from them, I’m ok with it.

Sorry, but that’s a load of crap. If all that religion is, can be boiled down to cognitive behavioral therapy, then give me another glass of cabernet sauvignon instead — that’s a much simpler coping mechanism. Inspirational feelings? Again, crap. I don’t need inspirational feelings, I can live on testosterone alone. I have NO USE WHATSOEVER for emply metaphysical speculations, emtionally comforting navel gazing nonsense. Garbage, garbage, garbage, all of it. Christianity does not “WORK FOR ME” at all, in the sense you mean — far, far from it, I totally HATE it sometimes. And all other competing religions are even worse.

I follow Christianity in defiance of natural inclination, in defiance of personal preference, and in defiance of the fact that it very often works against me and what I want, rather than for me, because….. drum roll…. it is OBJECTIVELY TRUE whether I like it or not.

Can it be proven “scientifically” — ie, by the method of experimental repeatability? No, but a lot of other things can’t either; if science is the only means by which we can “know” anything, show me the experiment that proves (or falsifies) that Lincoln was president during the Civil war… there isn’t one. the point: Unique historical events are not accessible to the scientific method, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t true. They CAN however, be proven beyond reasonable doubt by the historical/legal method of proof — assembling and examining evidence. Many who have tried to debunk Christianity, and particularly the Resurrection of Christ, in this way, have ended up converting. See for example, the books on that topic by Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel, as a starting point.

Sweet As: Let me be honest, I never ‘got’ protestant views on divorce. And I don’t get Sheila, either.

To explain….Matthew 5:[32] (Catholic Douay-Rheims translation)
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.

Most Protestants, and the Eastern Orthodox for many centuries (apparently even before the Schism), interpret that “except for fornication” (Greek: porneia, a catch all term for sexual misconduct), to mean that a divorce and remarraige is permissble in the case of sexual misconduct. Since the marital act, in other words, sex, which seals the covenant, is the “becoming one flesh” per Scripture, if your spouse cheats, and becomes flesh with another, the covenant is BROKEN, and divorce/remarriage is permissible. Not mandatory; forgiveness and reconciliation are still preferred. But it’s allowed

I have come eventually to disagree with the usual Protestant/Orthodox reading of this passage — and a lot of old school Evangelicals also took the Catholic view as well. But for your edification, that’s how most Evangelical Protestants see it. When they say, “Yes, so and so got a divorce, but s/he had biblical grounds for it”, they usually mean, that s/he was cheated on. On dating sites you will even see this assertion, “I divorced my exhub 3 years ago, but I had biblical grounds” (and therefore, by implication, the party is “biblically free to remarry”, a phrase you will also often hear.)

Catholics understand this passage (and the parallel passage in Matt 19:9) to allow divorce in case of sexual misconduct, but see no license for remarriage therein. They DO allow divorce and remarriage, however, in the case of abandonment by a non-believing spouse (1 Cor 7:15) — a situation most Protestants also accept.

Of course we’re talking Evangelicals here — people who take the Bible seriously. Absent sexual misconduct (Matt 5:32/Matt19:9) or abandonment (1Cor7:15), such people have historically frowned on divorce/remarriage, although that is unfortunately crumbling even in all but the strictest churches. By contrast, Liberal or Mainline Protestants DO NOT CARE about the Bible, and they alllow divorce/remarriage for “any cause at all”.

“That the pleasure arising to man
from contact with sensible objects,
is to be relinquished because accompanied by pain—
such is the reasoning of fools.
The kernels of the paddy, rich with finest white grains,
What man, seeking his own true interest,
would fling them away
because of a covering of husk and dust?
While life remains, let a man live happily,
let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;
When once the body becomes ashes,
how can it ever return again?”

But that is assuming that there is a meaningful difference/opposition between creation, life and death. Your arguments are rational from that perspective, but it is just one perspective.

AR: “I’ve pointed out before a long term study of children born in the 1920′s in the US, the Longevity study. One fact stood out starkly: “divorced parents” was a very strong indicator of shorter lifespan in children. It was stronger than anything else. Anything else. As has been said here and elsewhere, if there was a disease, viral or bacterial, that did to children what divorce &/or single parenthood does, an entire month would be set aside to raise money to find a cure.”

Interesting stuff. Worth picking up for a blog post from one of the bloggers here.

I would say that abandonment by a non-believing spouse may lead to catholic annulment *if* it can be proved to be invalid under the grounds listed. I think it could be in the “no intention to remain faithful” and possibly under “not open to children” which is catholic code for the narrow birth control confines (i consider natural family planning a form of birth control, though the church accepts it). Thus, it could be nullified.

In my experience (which, admittedly, is not all catholics, and thereby narrow), most catholics who divorce do not seek and/or do not receive nullification. I’ve not met one who gets it based on having married a non-believer, or because a person becomes a non-believer after the fact. But then, most catholics whom I know do not divorce, and those who do, usually do not seek nullification and instead, seem content enough to be adulterers (under the letter as it were), and not partake in the other sacraments (most notably the eucharist, for which you have to be absolved of all sin before partaking, and if you plan on continuing in that sin, you can’t get absolution).

On the issue of infidelity, I have no doubt that I would be *beside myself* if my husband were unfaithful, but i sure has hell would fight for my child’s needs above and beyond my own, and in so doing, fight for my marriage. To me, his safety and well being depend on it.

I see it as a not-insurmountable challenge. It would certainly have a lot to do with a lot of things (trust, body theology, bodily integrity — in my case, concern over disease and fluid bonding with strangers, among others), but I think that solid work in the matter would be preferable to divorce.

I find that many people just get pissy and then get a divorce over it, as opposed to . . . you know, working? Sometimes marriage isnt’ easy, and sometimes everyone is messing up left, right, and center, but honestly, reconciliation is the first course of action, and so few people ever even consider taking it.

And I agree with Grerp. Having had a divorce, and living as a solo Dad, the priority is the kids, not having a dating life. Divorce hurts your kids. Divorce will cost you financially (yes, that includes the Ladies).

I differentiate people like Grerp, Alte and Elspeth, who are neoTrads, from the weak evangelicals who would make every decent reformed preacher from Calvin to Schaeffer go into full rant mode. We should not be preaching about homosexuality. For most of us, that is not a temptation. We should be preaching against feminism and its bitter child, divorce.

Aqua Net, re marriage: I agree with you. Given the pitfalls of Marriage you listed it doesn’t make sense/ appear very rational for most men to marry nowadays. Perhaps it made sense in earlier times but not today.

However for strongly religious men it may still be rational as its a logical extension of their religious beliefs.

For women who want children it still is a rational choice as they get the status benefits of being married plus the benefits of divorce (home, child support, alimony) particularly if the husband is a high earner.

The line of “putting on big girl panties” when it comes to marriage hit home. My ex-wife never did that. It was fun, it was happy, but then on a dime, it seemed, it all changed. Later, I found out pretty much the day after we got married she started to question it.

Then you foresee humanity becoming even more irrational in the future, despite our scientific gains? Interesting.

Uh… if by your own admission that it is irrational to reproduce, (and thus, only the irrational breed) then yes, the law of natural selection alone will determine humanity becoming more irrational. The “rational” ones will die out, the irrational ones will be more successful in breeding.

I really hope this doesn’t devolve into a science vs. religion debate. I already feel too burned by that, and I’d like this to be a place for people of any belief to gather to discuss the issues at hand.

And Aqua Net, okay, maybe it is based on only “good feelings.” (And not a strong evolutionary drive to continue the species). So what? Ice cream feels good with no tangible benefit, but I’m still going to have it from time to time. Heck, doing a good crossword puzzle feels good, and I’ll do that from time to time too.

Being that I am Catholic I don’t totally understand the protestant hierarchy but being someone who has listened to quite a few female motivational speakers talk about marriage I rarely see them even mention divorce and the legitimate reasons as that just isn’t their forte. Rather they just tell women how to be good wives. They usually don’t talk about men at all because that isn’t Titus 2 territory.

So yeah, I definitely saw her as just a TItus 2 Motivational speaker telling women how to behave themselves. I figured this is quite distinct from an actual pastor who tries to interpret scripture on behalf of the masses.

Of course..if I am wrong and if she does go around talking about the legitimate reasons to divorce and includes “porn” among those reasons then I stand corrected because she is clearly preaching things that a woman who is looking for a get-out-of-marriage-card doesn’t need to hear. I just didn’t ASSUME that based on the comment she left.

Wow. I’ve heard all of these great things about “Fireproof” and yet from what you’ve quoted, it seems to me that they are both cheating. Lining up husband #2 while still married to #1 is wrong! Sheesh. No wonder there is so much trouble with marriages these days.

Morticia,
Not speaking about divorce IS the problem. It does no good to give encouragement and feel good feeling to women, while not challenging women and shaming women that frivolously divorce. No “pass” will be granted by men, since in the audience there are many women abusing their children, but actively keeping fathers out of lives of HIS children. Women being silent and placating of other women makes women accomplices after the fact. Such unfaithful destructive women should be shunned and openly exposed.

The last few motivational speakers I saw took a rather hard-assed approach to marriage. They said marriage was a JOB and it might not always make you happy but you have to do your job anyway to die with a clean conscience. While they didn’t mention divorce specifically they certainly didn’t placate to women’s feelings. Most women believe that there is some magic formula for marital happiness and hence they go to these women speakers only to find out that the women (at least the ones I have seen) are more about telling them to do their duty and pay little mind to their feelings.

I’ve never seen Sheila speak so I don’t know for sure if she takes the hard-assed approach but if she does then I doubt any woman leaves thinking she is justified in divorce.
[D: You are in luck. I’ve linked to where she speaks to women on youtube. One of the viewers had a question about what she would say regarding divorce for emotional abuse, and she answered. I’ve already quoted both, but you are free to follow the link and see for yourself.]

This is possibly one of Dalrock’s most important posts because it addresses directly the false advertising the Church has done in “selling” Christian women for marriage to Christian men.

I’ve seen this firsthand.in every church I’ve ever been to. Christian women are told they are special, more holy and set apart for God’s purposes. Lip service (mostly) is given to the biblical command of wifely submission. The “you’re special, you’re holy, God has a plan and purpose for your special life” is reinforced by other women. These young women are thus hoisted onto their pedestals. (This is why churches are such havens for reformed sluts: A few really do repent. Most are simply desperate for absolution, for positive attention for something other than what’s between their legs, and to lock down that beta.)

The young men are told that those women must stay firmly ensconced on those pedestals. They are warned never to deflower these precious specimens of womanhood, that they must be on their best behaviors at all times before marriage. They are seriously warned against masturbation, porn, “unclean thoughts”, fornication and adultery, that these are sins which will result in eternal damnation. Chrisitan men are told that sexual sins are unique, and that in truth, only men commit sexual sins because men are the only gender that lusts. Christian men are routinely told that their highest and best purposes are as husbands and fathers and that they must find a girl who will deign to marry them now, now, NOW!

Note that Christian women are almost never told the concomitant: That their highest and best purposes are as wives and mothers. Christian women are almost never told:
1. that they must submit to their husbands and that there is biblical authority for that.

2. That biblical submission does not mean doormat or slave status.

3. That a wife has marital obligations to her husband, and that among these obligations is regular sexual coupling at reasonable intervals.

4. That the wife should not refuse the husband unreasonably.

5. That women commit sexual sins too.

6. That divorce is biblically permitted only in very, very limited circumstances.

1. Reformed hard core party girl whores with a past that would make your eyes cross: 20%
2. Decent women who are not in any way, shape or form different than girls outside of the church other than their rationalization hamster can quote scripture: 75%
3. Social retards or ugly girls who don’t fit in out in the real world, so they find a place at church: 5%

Type 3 stands out like a sore thumb, but you can’t tell the difference between types 1 and 2 and that should scare the piss out men. You have the same chance of pulling a “good girl” out of a bar on Friday night at 1:45 a.m. as you do pulling one out of a sanctuary on Sunday at 11:45 a.m.”

I’d say that’s about right with a little variation among the percentage distributions.

I noticed this years ago as a high schooler: There is really no difference between a Christian girl and her secular sisters when it comes to dating, relationships and marriage. Christian women are just as susceptible to hypergamy and all the other deleterious conduct.

The point is that we Christian men are lied to and told that our “sisters in Christ” are different, when in fact they are not at all different. We’re told to pedestal Christian women. Men are instructed that Christian women are special, holy, set apart, “God’s daughters”, exempt from hypergamy and sinful lusts, and that they are somehow “better” marriage material. It’s a fraud that continues to be perpetrated in churches everywhere.

Christian women are only better marriage material IF they believe firmly that marriage does not HAVE to make them happy and they still have a duty to stay married. It seems a lot of Churches seem to be telling women that they have a right to be happy in marriage.

The “Prosperity Gospel”, also called the “name-it-claim-it” cult is typical heresy. The gist of it is God wants his flock to be “kings Kids” and there for if you speak with your mouth, wealth, health, happiness, God allegedly promises to give that to you for the asking…if you have enough “faith”. Ah, here is the rub, this “faith” is manifested by your opening your wallet and giving money to the name-it-claim-it ministers…SO, if you don’t have health,wealth, happiness…it’s because you weren’t “faithful’ enough…WITH YOUR GIVING! ( meeting God halfway ya know).

Dalrock, thank you so much for this stream, this deconstruction of pop-Christianity is critical..
Jesus promised that living in Christian faith will bring scorn, ridicule, persecution and death…”but fear not, I have overcome the world”. The Christian faith is not easy, it requires extreme discipline and “faith” that the recipe God offers in scripture for the right way to live a life that is ultimately just and correct.
Our world is toxic and Satan does have the power to grant evidence of worldly happiness/success/fulfillment to non-believers…Paul agonized about the apparent easy life sinners lived, and the harsh life many believers endured. I admit wondering about God’s benevolence, justice etc. I read the heart-wretching stories (here) of spouses deeply wronged by their mates, the Hitlers, Gacy’s, etc. and ask God, do you see this?, why are you letting this scumbag get away with this crappy behavior ? where is the justice?

There is another strain in pop-Christianity that I find very destructive, and the women folk seem especially attracted to it…it is the concept that you cannot lose your salvation once you accept Jesus into your heart.
So in practice it goes like this…Suzy Slut has a moment of clarity, asks God to be her savior and ipso-presto she is washed clean, forgiven…poof! no longer a tramp. She hears the “never lose your salvation” message and thinks…wait a minute…as long as I don’t die in my sin, I can cheat, steal, lie, bang the pool boy, whatever, take a shower say “sorry God” and I’m good to go, forgiven!
The problem is, the Bible says this ain’t so! In fact it says if once redeemed , you return to sin, there is no forgiveness…Hummm!

The bible is very clear about one thing, “the gate is narrow and few enter” (salvation).

Morticia: Christian women are only better marriage material IF they believe firmly that marriage does not HAVE to make them happy and they still have a duty to stay married. It seems a lot of Churches seem to be telling women that they have a right to be happy in marriage.

Surely, thou hast utterly nailed it. Most important post of the thread.

Phil Samson: I’m not a believer, and I only attend church because it’s politically and socially advantageous to do so

How strange. I wouldn’t waste 10 minutes, let alone 10% of my income, on the church if I didn’t believe. Tell us, how many are there like you, percentage wise? (Since you seem to have the women figured out fairly well).

I think traditional marriage is practically dead. For both women and men, we are going to have to renegotiate the meaning of marriage and family. Maybe marriage will become completely irrelevant altogether and some other thing will emerge in its place.

Unlikely. The “likely replacement” (open relationship forms) would be even much more of a screwjob for men than the presumed monogamy marriage is, because, as a practical matter, most women can pull more easily than most men, so if they are not “locked down” in a monogamous commitment, one of the men (the guy who helps take care of the kids) is basically an official cuckold to his wife. A small minority of men may get off on that, but most do not, so it’s rather unlikely to evolve as a strong alternative.

What we are undoubtedly going to see more of is single mothers, up and down the demographic scale. The current trends of marriage remaining strong in the college educated set are lagging indicators, because the generations in their late 30s and 40s whom these are based on went to college when it was closer to 50/50. College is now becoming closer to 70/30 female, and so a LOT of college educated women will not be in relationships with college educated men, and so will drop out of the “college gold” demographic of high marriage rates and low divorce rates. That’s virtually guaranteed to happen in the next 10-20 years given substantial skew in the matriculation and graduation rates by sex, and the downstream impact this will have as these generations age into the 30s and 40s.

do you honestly think that THAT many people REALLY want to have them?

Yes, they do. As you say, you are an outlier — in this area probably more than any other. Children are your legacy – they give meaning to your life in a tangible and alive way that cannot be matched by any other thing in life. Most people want children at some point. Sure, there are some who don’t — fine. But most really do want children at some point, and rightfully so.

There are four ways in which a marriage can be annulled: 1. one or both parties did not consent to the marriage; 2. one or both parties wasn’t old enough to fully consent to the marriage; 3. one or both parties had no intention to remain faithful; and 4. one or both parties were not open to having children at the time of the marriage.

On paper. In practice, the tribunals in the United States are notoriously lenient when doling out annulments. It’s pain in the ass as a process because you have to appear before the tribunal and actually explain and confront each other about the marriage and so on, and there are numerous bureaucratic and documentary aspects that need to be surmounted as well. But if you are willing to go through the process, and you live in the United States, it is not that hard to obtain an annulment, because a proper annulment advocate can drive a tank through a few of the categories. For example, it is not difficult to show an imperfection of intention, or that one did not consent because one did not fully understand what one was consenting to properly, or that one was not open to having children because of a long and notorious practice of using ABC, which can also be used to demonstrate insufficient intention, lack of consent to a Catholic marriage and so on. It’s a PITA process, but it’s not hard to obtain if you want to obtain it. The only reason people *do* obtain it is if they want to get married (again, because that’s what it is in everything but theory) in the Catholic Church — so that cuts down on the number of applicants (most people will go somewhere else rather than litigate their marriage again in front of the tribunal years after the fact). But in practice, the Catholics are as lenient about this as anyone else in the United States Christian scene is — they just are good Jesuits about dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s about it. And, yes, I was a cradle Catholic and even taught CCD for years before decamping from the Catholic Church — one of the main issues being the disconnect between what the Church teaches on paper (which Catholics love to hide behind) and the actual practice of the Church in this and numerous other areas – areas where contemporary mores are basically catered to, hook, line and sinker, coupled together with an almost overwhelming feminization in many, many parishes.

====

As for the main topic, what can you say? If looking at porn is the same as having a fully-blown sexual affair in moral terms, virtually every single marriage is optionable from the female Christian perspective. Whilst women are even permitted to date and kiss other men with no moral qualms, even when they are still married. Duplicitous and hypocritical? Certainly. But it’s par for the course in what is now an overwhelmingly feminist, feminized, hollowed-out Western Christianity. Shelia Gregoire is only one of many, and by no means the worst offender, in this area.

I always come late to the interesting discussions, but I do want to add my voice to this one. There are two memes I want to bring together, and I hope I can do so successfully.

The first meme is that what passes for Evangelical “Christianity” in the United States and which has been exported throughout the so-called Third World is of relatively recent vintage and has only a passing resemblance to Christianity as practiced from the time of Constantine until about the middle of the 18th Century. The second meme is that here in the United States, because of unique historical circumstances, this mutated strain of Christianity heavily favors women and this bias towards the feminine has become part of its DNA.

I don’t want to discuss the differences between “progressive” Christianity and “traditionalist” Christianity. That is an entirely different discussion and on that has no direct bearing here. Although my sympathies are more with the traditionalist branch, I experience them as cut from the same cloth, sharing the same presuppositions, equally as fem-dominant, and to be blunt, I shit in both their skulls. ( I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2006 )

Europe and its daughters used to be a Christian civilization. To be a Christian pre 1750 meant that you were baptized, became a member of the established Church, followed that established Church’s rules and disciplines, and passed into the afterlife with the assurance that your sins were taken care of. Anyone who felt the need to go above and beyond the norm were channelled into the clergy or into a celibate order. Around about 1750, though, these hyper-Christians got the idea that EVERY Christian should be one of these above-and-beyonders, left the state Churches with their hopelessly carnal and quotidian attitudes, and began to congregate into smaller pietistic groups who assured themselves that they were “true” Christians who really “knew Christ”.

In the newly independent and democratic United States, this process acquired steroids. Cults and sects multiplied like locusts from the book of Joel, each group bewailing the compromise and lukewarmness of their predecessors and holding forth to the masses that they, indeed, were the “true, revived Christians” of the book of Acts born into our latter day wilderness.

Interestingly, these movements took place on the American frontier, far from the centers of civilization where the established churches still held sway. The frontier was a rough and tumble place, and for the most part, it was masculine. Women were scarce and highly prized. Women also meant civilization, order, progress, and the rule of law. Most of all, they meant continuity, and the outbreaks of revival on the American frontier suspiciously coincided with the arrival of more and more women on the frontier. The revivalist preachers preached heavily against drinkin’ chawin’ shootin’ gamblin’ whorin’ and other typically masculine sins, in an attempt to clean up the rough frontier districts and make them suitable for women and domesticity. It was from within this matrix that the myth was born of the spiritual superiority of the ‘delicate’ and ‘sensitive’ female over against the “brutish” and “reprobate” male. Once converted to “Christ”, this masculine energy was channeled into female- (and clergy-) approved activities, and the frontier became more and more ‘civilized’.

The manifestation of this myth grew and waxed strong in the post Civil-War period with the sentimentalization of the virtues of “home” and “family” (also both modern constructs over against the older sodalities of clan and tribe). Its high-water mark appears to be the prohibition of alcohol in 1919. After the repeal of that pernicious piece of legislation, the effect of the myth of the spiritual superiority of women has been felt mostly in the rise of feminism in the progressive branch of Protestantism, and from there into the secular culture which is the heir of that tradition.

In the “traditionalist” branch of Protestantism, the myth generated the whole “Focus on the Family”-style cottage industry of marriage-fixing. Male headship is paid lip-service, but with the qualification that the headship be Christ-like before women were expected to submit to it. This led to some terrible stress put on real flesh-and-blood husbands and fathers as the bar kept rising and their efforts were seen as being more and more inadequate.

Lest this be seen as a Protestant issue only, I submit this powerful work by a Catholic writer, Leon Podles, “The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity.” Mr. Podles has shot a cannon ball over the bow of the barque of St. Peter in hopes of getting it to change course, and his historical vision goes back even further than I do. The whole work can be read online here:

There are four ways in which a marriage can be annulled: 1. one or both parties did not consent to the marriage; 2. one or both parties wasn’t old enough to fully consent to the marriage; 3. one or both parties had no intention to remain faithful; and 4. one or both parties were not open to having children at the time of the marriage.

On paper. In practice, the tribunals in the United States are notoriously lenient when doling out annulments. It’s pain in the ass as a process because you have to appear before the tribunal and actually explain and confront each other about the marriage and so on, and there are numerous bureaucratic and documentary aspects that need to be surmounted as well. But if you are willing to go through the process, and you live in the United States, it is not that hard to obtain an annulment, because a proper annulment advocate can drive a tank through a few of the categories. For example, it is not difficult to show an imperfection of intention, or that one did not consent because one did not fully understand what one was consenting to properly, or that one was not open to having children because of a long and notorious practice of using ABC, which can also be used to demonstrate insufficient intention, lack of consent to a Catholic marriage and so on. It’s a PITA process, but it’s not hard to obtain if you want to obtain it. The only reason people *do* obtain it is if they want to get married (again, because that’s what it is in everything but theory) in the Catholic Church — so that cuts down on the number of applicants (most people will go somewhere else rather than litigate their marriage again in front of the tribunal years after the fact). But in practice, the Catholics are as lenient about this as anyone else in the United States Christian scene is — they just are good Jesuits about dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s about it. And, yes, I was a cradle Catholic and even taught CCD for years before decamping from the Catholic Church — one of the main issues being the disconnect between what the Church teaches on paper (which Catholics love to hide behind) and the actual practice of the Church in this and numerous other areas – areas where contemporary mores are basically catered to, hook, line and sinker, coupled together with an almost overwhelming feminization in many, many parishes.

====
As for the main topic, what can you say? If looking at porn is the same as having a fully-blown sexual affair in moral terms, virtually every single marriage is optionable from the female Christian perspective. Whilst women are even permitted to date and kiss other men with no moral qualms, even when they are still married. Duplicitous and hypocritical? Certainly. But it’s par for the course in what is now an overwhelmingly feminist, feminized, hollowed-out Western Christianity. Shelia Gregoire is only one of many, and by no means the worst offender, in this area.

Would you like to meet my ex-wife. As of 2002 Connecticut has a presumption of alimony for wives married more than ten years lasting at least the half the length of the marriage.

So, she went to find herself and I got to pay for it. Then she moved in with her boyfriend the month the gravy train ended.

Plus, child support often amounts alimony. The guy in the cube next to mine has joint custody…one week at his place and one week at hers. However, given he makes more than her he pays what the state says is his fair share of what they said kids cost (got a little chart). He makes 60% of the combined income he pays 60% of that number to her even though HE HAS THE KIDS HALF THE TIME. If the law was he paid 10% I might buy it but nope. He supports them half the year and pays her over 50% of what the state says is required to care for them.

Thomas says:
“The problem will not be addressed, I think, as long as Christians have the heretical view that remarriage while one’s spouse is alive is not adultery.”

Heresy? The Hebrew culture of the Bible is polygynous and nothing Jesus says in any way challenges that. If the Bible is the basis for one’s beliefs, a man can have many wives and concubines “alive” in his home simultaneously at one time and not commit adultery. If you carefully note Christ’s teachings, you will find that a woman is caused to be an adulteress right from the time she is cast out. It may either be that no outside action or remarriage of any type is required, or else it is assumed that she will immediately latch on to another male sex partner.

“But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away (send away “apolusē”) his wife, saving for the cause of fornication (“porneia”, not the modern term fornication), causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” – Matthew 5:33

Notice that in Jesus’ teaching, it is only the woman who is sent away and her new men who are committing adultery. The husband only commits adultery (against his ex-wife) when he adds a replacement wife to his harem after divorcing for reasons other than sexual offense.

The manifestation of this myth grew and waxed strong in the post Civil-War period with the sentimentalization of the virtues of “home” and “family” (also both modern constructs over against the older sodalities of clan and tribe). Its high-water mark appears to be the prohibition of alcohol in 1919. After the repeal of that pernicious piece of legislation, the effect of the myth of the spiritual superiority of women has been felt mostly in the rise of feminism in the progressive branch of Protestantism, and from there into the secular culture which is the heir of that tradition.

In the “traditionalist” branch of Protestantism, the myth generated the whole “Focus on the Family”-style cottage industry of marriage-fixing. Male headship is paid lip-service, but with the qualification that the headship be Christ-like before women were expected to submit to it. This led to some terrible stress put on real flesh-and-blood husbands and fathers as the bar kept rising and their efforts were seen as being more and more inadequate.

Lest this be seen as a Protestant issue only, I submit this powerful work by a Catholic writer, Leon Podles, “The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity.” Mr. Podles has shot a cannon ball over the bow of the barque of St. Peter in hopes of getting it to change course, and his historical vision goes back even further than I do. The whole work can be read online here:

I want to thank you for revealing the growing double standard not only in our society, but in Christian thought. Men do not get the fair shake that women get.

Using Fireproof as an example, at the beginning of the movie you had two unequally yoked people. From what I gathered, neither one was a Christian (at the end of the movie, Catherine tells Caleb that she wants what he found). Sure, Caleb was the first to transgress by viewing pornography. However, Catherine also transgressed. If you take Matt. 5:28 to heart, it applies to women as well as to men. The moment that Catherine flirted with her doctor friend, she also commited adultery. The movie is soft on this fact. To swing to the other side, Caleb may have had more of a reason to divorce Catherine, once he became a Christian and repented.

Thank you again for speaking on this. I have seen many wife-initiated divorces that occurred “just because”. It’s a sad epidemic. If more Christians entered marriage, realizing that we’re all to strive to be the person that God wants us to be, not what our spouse wants us to be, divorce would no longer be an issue.

“Male headship is paid lip-service, but with the qualification that the headship be Christ-like before women were expected to submit to it. This led to some terrible stress put on real flesh-and-blood husbands and fathers as the bar kept rising and their efforts were seen as being more and more inadequate.”

This is very, very true. And it’s something I have addressed on numerous occasions online as well as off. The Scripture is clear that a wife is to obey her husband even if he isn’t a believer (1 Peter 3). She is not to commit sin of course, but when it comes to the issues of daily life, his godliness is not to be used as a qualifier for whether or not she is to submit.

I dont mean to say this in this way but you are…..short sighted. Your brain is not sophisticated enough to figure things out. Not as much alimony today? BECAUSE it was stealthed into child support. Hence the false DV for tactical purposes. This is just one tactic. It is much more dynamic than that. It is the easiest example that happens on a majority of time and if you can figure out how things play out with how i framed the situation, well, this is why some men say women are not adults but children (think like one).

This is not to say that all women are like that (NAWALT) . We as men (or at least I do) know that NAWALT but practically, men have to run off the assumption (because majority of the time they are ::which is also subjective…take it at face value as save your hamster the running”.

If a wife submits first, this gives a husband the opportunity to rise to the occasion. Both will fall short, but a wife should not wait until her husband rises to Christ-like heights before giving him the benefit of the doubt. It’s unfair to put such high expectations on a man and impossible for a him to be a good leader under these circumstances. A woman who will not allow him to lead is hindering his development as the head of the household by placing impossible burdens on him. If she is not exemplary, neither will he be.

“deti says:
What do the women who regularly comment here think about this (other than, of course, Morticia, Chels and AquaNet)? Where are the regular female commenters?”

Think about what, the post in general? I’m only an occasional female commenter (though regular reader), but I just haven’t seen much to say here. The stats show for themselves – women who want to divorce will come up with whatever they want. If they are women who consider themselves religious, they may use that as part of the excuse, but it’s unlikely to be any restraining force on them.
I think this intended outreach to Christian men who don’t realize that ‘Christian’ doesn’t mean anything different for their women (or not sufficiently different) is valuable, but I think statistics don’t get through to a lot of people, and it tends to be ultimately futile until they’ve actually personally seen men they know trodden on by flimsy-excuse-bearing women.

I find the theology debates a little silly, since everyone’s just speaking from a different reference point, and unless the point of the debate is to debate theology (which it doesn’t seem to be), a discussion in which everyone has a different set of base assumptions rarely goes anywhere. I am also not a Christian, but respect the religion, so I tend to just stay out of that topic area.

I agree that seeking a “Christian” woman as some sort of surety that you will not get a divorce is fantasy.
I sought a Christian for one reason…I’m logical by nature; I think marriage and relationships are extremely difficult and similar culture, religion, economic status, education, basic morality, sexual desires-needs, hobbies, tastes, etc all make for a greater likelihood of a lasting, fulfilling, secure union.

One of the practical effects of female Hypergamy is very few women end up paying men alimony or child support. Women are clever enough to almost universally try and avoid situations where they will end up the loser WHEN the time comes and they exit their marriage. In spite of the fact that no-fault divorce is supposedly gender neutral only 4% of alimony paid goes from women to men.

They achieve numerous ways starting with the fact that they almost never marry down. This is one important reason women are constantly lamenting about the lack of marriageable men. Not only must men produce enough income to support an ambitious lifestyle they also must not end up as a liability. In situations where a husband and wife earn an equal amount the husband quickly becomes a millstone if he loses his job or becomes ill or disabled. Never mind that she might take years off noodling around by baby stacking or being underemployed in fun but dead end jobs. Some women will go to great lengths to lower their income once they plan on exiting the marriage. Excuses such as cutting hours to stay at home with the children ostensibly to help with schooling, insincere job searches, or getting new degrees (and boob jobs) on the family dime, which only produce income after the divorce is finalized are legion. Anything not to have to pay money to the man or lose primary custody!

The statistic that roughly 75% + of all divorces are initiated by women is much worse than it sounds. Most of these women have had years to reposition themselves to reap the benefit when their marriages end. Most if not all, will have had the benefit of legal counsel and so are in a much better position to launch the offensive. One reason divorce is down in the great recession is that men’s incomes are down. Not only are they focused on the practical matter of where to live but whatever future annuity the alimony would produce is either diminished or NEGATIVE (oh the horrors). These women are also in a far better spot emotionally. When hubby gets the divorce papers, quite often he will grovel and fall apart while she simply carries out her plan. Her tears are long dry.

If we want to cut back on the number of divorces my advice would be to follow the money; or more specifically, cut the money off. Being less inclined to earn money, women are far more conniving then their male counterparts. Ending long term alimony, and making shared equal parenting the norm we will probably see fewer marriages to begin with and possibly more abortions if welfare is cut (something the church will vehemently oppose) but we will probably also have fewer divorces and more children growing up in two parent families which will produce more functional families in the future as well.

I said that women who ARE divorced (whether they prefer being or not) prefer to live alone and not GET MARRIED AGAIN.

Please note that I’m not saying they prefer to not date, not have sex, not have boyfriends etc. The Villages, which is a prominant and wellknown retirement community in Florida, has high std rates. Make no bones about it, old women are getting their freak on. They just DON’T to want to live with the men they are gettin’ jiggy widdit with and have to live out their last decades being a maid, nurse and cook to a sick, dying man.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Your fascinating conjecture on what happens in a specific retirement community in Florida notwithstanding, the data shows something entirely different. The AARP did a study of late life divorce a few years back. What they found was that divorced women who didn’t remarry faced a bleak prospect. Far from being the freewheeling swinging grandmas you fantasize of, these women mostly ended up terribly alone:

Almost 9 in 10 men (87%) dated after their divorce, compared to 8 in 10 women (79%)… Among those who dated after the divorce, more than half of men (54%) but fewer women remarried (39%). (Page 39)

Many women, especially those who have not remarried (69%), do not touch or hug at all sexually. An even larger majority of women who have not remarried do not engage in sexual intercourse (77% saying not at all), in comparison with about half of men (49%) who have not remarried. (Page 6)

What do the women who regularly comment here think about this (other than, of course, Morticia, Chels and AquaNet)? Where are the regular female commenters?

I have in fact commented on this thread and the previous thread, Deti. My position has been clearly stated and I think Dalrock would concur, duly noted.

What i think is that the church is too lax on divorce and that a good percentage of remarriages are adulterous from a Biblical standpoint. I have stated unequivocally that of by some incredible turn of events I found myself separated from my own husband I would not divorce or remarry again.

grerp – “Well I take issue with this, i normally find grerps posts refreshing, but this is hamster minimalisation … the rest of her post pretty much sidestepped this thread

To clarify, I am against divorce. I think it is the thief that keeps on taking.”

Hey grerp, jus wanted to say I wasnt attacking you in anyway, I enjoy your posts & it gives guys like me hope, as we’re pretty much surrounded by women who’re literally compulsive liars when it comes their own faults

It’s this compulsive lying i really have a major issue with, as i dont see the point of lying so compulsively to the point a woman completely destroys her credibility as a person

Woman lie so much, they use it as a defence mechanism to control the situation, instead of solving the situation

It is precisely this compulsive lying ALL women PROUDLY indulge in, the reason I will NEVER allow a woman to raise my children

What pisses me off even more is, when you catch them at it, they actually have the nerve to get pissed off for calling them out on it, they literally have no sense of dignity when it comes to being a bitch

The other type of woman is the cry at everything you point out, moron, who start to blubber everytime you call them out for being compulsive liars, like some demented 10 yr old

Once i get enough cash, I’ll be hiring a european surrogate mother, yes i want to pass on the decades of innovation & theories & inventions ive accumulated as an adult

You cant beat a child growing up under all the advantages of the tutelage of some1 well versed in all the advantages of modern day technology & science

But if i had a choice, i would choose an artificial womb over a surrogate, as you cant rule out disease & other inherited stuff, as you would with an artificial womb

I dont think women truly realise, how much men hate modern day women, to the point we would consider an artificial womb, or a surrogate, over a mother to raise our children

Personally i’ve gotten to the point, I dont think women should even be allowed to have children

Considering how dangerously they compulsively lie & emotionally abuse everyone around them, & the amount of damage they cause to everyone around them, because of their inability to rationalise even the smallest consequence of their actions

I would never employ a woman, or hire a woman in my workplace, i’ve just seen so many families & men destroyed by modern day women, i refuse to tolerate women in any form

I have no problem dating & sex with them, but anything beyond that is off limits to a woman

I refuse to give women the opportunity to mentally or emotionally abuse my children, or damage their lives with the irrational consequences of their actions

For those of with a real legacy which needs to pass on, surrogate mothers or artificial wombs are the only rational choice

Todays woman does not deserve what i have to give, & they do not deserve access to my kids

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“The first meme is that what passes for Evangelical “Christianity” in the United States and which has been exported throughout the so-called Third World is of relatively recent vintage and has only a passing resemblance to Christianity as practiced from the time of Constantine until about the middle of the 18th Century.”

This is true, but the elevation of the Church as a parallel political power base, outside the existing Roman political structure (yet mirroring it in organization and ritual) for the benefit of the god-emperor Constantine didn’t exactly help do much to preserve what was then traditional (1st century style) Christianity (no “clergy”, no paid staff, no building, etc).

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“Around about 1750, though, these hyper-Christians got the idea that EVERY Christian should be one of these above-and-beyonders, left the state Churches with their hopelessly carnal and quotidian attitudes, and began to congregate into smaller pietistic groups who assured themselves that they were “true” Christians who really “knew Christ”.”

1750? Try the early 1400’s (Hussites). Even the Baptists were in full flower by the early 1600’s.

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“In the newly independent and democratic United States, this process acquired steroids. Cults and sects multiplied like locusts from the book of Joel, each group bewailing the compromise and lukewarmness of their predecessors and holding forth to the masses that they, indeed, were the “true, revived Christians” of the book of Acts born into our latter day wilderness.”

Actual cults, not so much until the “Second Great Awakening,” running from about 1790 or so into about 1840, which was a religious revival in the northeastern U.S. that was largely co-opted by the proto-feminists of New England and their male supporters/exploiters. It spread west as far as Ohio and none of its principals really caught on south of the Mason-Dixon. It spawned and/or accelerated a number of Christian cults (some still in business), the free sex movement, the temperance/prohibition movement, the abolition movement, the anti-prostitution movement, the suffragette movement, and basically, women’s lib and utopian idealism kludged onto a form of Christianity.

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“Interestingly, these movements took place on the American frontier, far from the centers of civilization where the established churches still held sway. The frontier was a rough and tumble place, and for the most part, it was masculine. Women were scarce and highly prized. Women also meant civilization, order, progress, and the rule of law. Most of all, they meant continuity, and the outbreaks of revival on the American frontier suspiciously coincided with the arrival of more and more women on the frontier.”

Nope. The changes introduced in frontier revivals, basically short term Baptist and Methodist camp meetings, weren’t about social change, but modes of worship. The big social changes and the big cults coming out of the SGA were all hatched in the more settled NE, especially New York state. I’m defining “frontier” as a place and time where a man could get scalped, if he was not paying attention.

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“The revivalist preachers preached heavily against drinkin’ chawin’ shootin’ gamblin’ whorin’ and other typically masculine sins, in an attempt to clean up the rough frontier districts and make them suitable for women and domesticity.”

The ideas you mention were in fact universally adopted by almost all the groups we now refer to as “evangelicals,” but not until the early 20th century and not as a frontier phenomenon. Although the frontier Methodists campaigned against distilled liquor (not beer or wine), it was women as a group, working across denominational lines, who were promoters of prohibition. Many Baptist groups did not fall into line on booze until almost the turn of the 20th century. This is also true for drives to regulate or prohibit prostitution and gambling, which spread south and west from the northeast as a cross-denominational women’s initiative. The “clergy” that pushed these social changes were northeastern (Mass) clowns like Beecher, who promoted these women’s causes while banging them under their husbands noses. Anti-gun and anti-tobacco sentiment were never present on the frontier, neither in politics nor religion, but appeared as socio-political campaigns in the mid-20th century. The preachers on the frontier were no-nonsense guys with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other. The spread of north eastern prohibition and prostitution ideas to the frontier doesn’t crystalize until the 1890’s when Carrie Nation got going.

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“It was from within this matrix that the myth was born of the spiritual superiority of the ‘delicate’ and ‘sensitive’ female over against the “brutish” and “reprobate” male. Once converted to “Christ”, this masculine energy was channeled into female- (and clergy-) approved activities, and the frontier became more and more ‘civilized’.”

Umm. No. Have you ever heard the medieval French term for “heavy cavalry?”

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“The manifestation of this myth grew and waxed strong in the post Civil-War period with the sentimentalization of the virtues of “home” and “family” (also both modern constructs over against the older sodalities of clan and tribe).”

Not hardly. Clan and tribe were finished in most of Europe south of Hadrian’s wall by 500. Most native-born Americans were still living in extended families until after WWI.

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“Its high-water mark appears to be the prohibition of alcohol in 1919. After the repeal of that pernicious piece of legislation, the effect of the myth of the spiritual superiority of women has been felt mostly in the rise of feminism in the progressive branch of Protestantism, and from there into the secular culture which is the heir of that tradition.”

Essentially on the money, but their greatest, most pernicious achievement still stands, the 20th Amendment.

asinusspinasmasticans says:
“In the “traditionalist” branch of Protestantism, the myth generated the whole “Focus on the Family”-style cottage industry of marriage-fixing. Male headship is paid lip-service, but with the qualification that the headship be Christ-like before women were expected to submit to it. This led to some terrible stress put on real flesh-and-blood husbands and fathers as the bar kept rising and their efforts were seen as being more and more inadequate.”

Women have outnumbered men in American church attendance since about 1820 and today it is an institution largely for the benefit of women, fronted by feminized men. But Jerome and Augustine were feminized men as well, promoting teachings about the family and sexual behavior which were far, far removed from the Biblical models.

Elspeth: What i think is that the church is too lax on divorce and that a good percentage of remarriages are adulterous from a Biblical standpoint. I have stated unequivocally that of by some incredible turn of events I found myself separated from my own husband I would not divorce or remarry again.

You are one of the honorable few. A breath of grace. Once, just once, I’d like to hear a divorced Christian — of either sex, of any denomination — come right out and say,

“I’m not looking for a new relationship, because I’m not biblically free to remarry”.

Haven’t seen it yet. They ALL date, they ALL seek remarriage. And if the church is biblically strict about post-divorce remarriage, they just leave.

Perhaps the major threat comes from the likes of Joel Olsteen who seems to preach that as a Christian you should never have any struggles, pains or trials, aka ‘the prosperity gospel’ and this is heresy, a word i do not use lightly, as much as saying that we should sin more so that grace may more abound.

Until the Church comes to understand exactly what ‘Take up your cross and follow me’ really means, and faithfully teaches it week by week from pulpits throughout the world, we will suffer from religion instead of being blessed by Christian witness.

Unfortunately, the female experience of Christianity is quite antithetical to that of the male. Females experience theology primarily through the lens of solipsism, and their emotional responses to said theology are variations of pure narcissism. The Father provides woman with unconditional love and absolves them of all sins, while decreeing her uniqueness as one of his children. To achieve unconditional love from the The Alpha Father himself is enough to transform any woman into an infantile, entitled, narcissistic creature who can do no wrong and deserves nothing but the best in all walks of life. Female entitlement is a core psychological aspect of Christianity, kept only in check by strict patriarchal law. Remove the law, and you get our present state: rampant female entitlement as demonstrated by feminism, hypergamy, irresponsibility, and promiscuity.

The balance inherent in ecclesiastical dogma was fine tuned over millennia. Females were satisfied emotionally, and their base instincts were controlled by strict family law. This made for a very powerful family structure, where the needs of both men and women were met with an agreeable compromise. There were few extreme losers, and few superstar winners. Most were happy enough to enjoy life.

We have now transitioned to a winner take all system. Family and fidelity were the first casualties in this laissez faire paradigm. It is naive to believe that males and females can be convinced via moral compunctions to return voluntarily to a system that provides no guarantees in the form of law.

For all your good intention Dalrock, your successful marriage at a young age has made you an idealist. The reality is in stark contrast to the life you’ve lead. Without the central tenets of Christian family law, marriage and the concept of family are stillborn. Christian belief without its corresponding law becomes an exercise in theological solipsism at best, and divinely sanctioned feminism at worst.

Wow. Piper’s a regular limbo artist, squirming and twisting to get around Christ’s recorded words in Matthew 5:32. As for Mark 10:11&12, carefully note that a man only commits adultery against his wife when he divorces her and replaces her and not at all when she divorces him. Not to mention, it’s only the divorcing woman Paul prohibits from remarrying in Corinthians 7. Thanks for the link. I knew Piper was kind of “out there,” but this is too much.

Wow. Piper’s a regular limbo artist, squirming and twisting to get around Christ’s recorded words in Matthew 5:32. As for Mark 10:11&12, carefully note that a man only commits adultery against his wife when he divorces her and replaces her and not at all when the wife is divorcing him. Not to mention, it’s only the divorcing woman Paul prohibits from remarrying in Corinthians 7. Thanks for the link. I knew Piper was kind of “out there,” but this is too much.

“Once, just once, I’d like to hear a divorced Christian — of either sex, of any denomination — come right out and say,

“I’m not looking for a new relationship, because I’m not biblically free to remarry”.”

IDK, there are many (secular) divorced men who only will marry women who will pay their way and who do not want him to give her children, which is about the same in result as saying “I’m not looking for a new relationship, because I’m not biblically free to remarry”, at least when it comes to women in the 28-38 age bracket, before and after that it might be different, if you can pull younger women or get it up for older (single) women.

I am a divorced father and when women ask me “Why are you still single, you are rich and good looking” I would like to answer “Because I do not want a woman whose main reasons for wanting me is my money and/or my quality sperm.”, but I dont, I just say “I guess I have not found the right girl yet”.

I’m not looking for a new relationship, because I’m not biblically free to remarry”.”

IDK, there are many (secular) divorced men who only will marry women who will pay their way and who do not want him to give her children, which is about the same in result as saying “I’m not looking for a new relationship, because I’m not biblically free to remarry”

Except for the all-important CELIBACY aspect. Divorced Christians — in all or very nearly all cases –are required to either remain celibate, or repair their original marriage. Legions don’t. Hence a good many of the marriages in the modern Evangelical church, may in fact be simply ongoing adulterous affairs that the church should be rebuking, not accepting (or worse, performing ceremonies for)

A secular divorced man who dates and remarries (with or without kids, with or without going “dutch”), is a totally different phenomenon, having nothing to do with the topic at hand,

I watched the movie Fireproof not too long after it first came out, and I loved it. So did my husband and my Christian friends. However, we *all* were appalled at Catherine’s flirting with the doctor, and my husband and I did/do NOT view use of porn as biblical grounds for divorce. From our perspective, the movie showed a marriage consisting of two people who both were in the wrong and who were leading their marriage toward divorce. In order for the marriage to be saved, one of them had to step up and start the process, and the husband did it. This was appropriate, as husbands are called to be leaders in the home, and by taking the lead in the effort to save the marriage, he stepped into his biblical role.

I watched the movie before I started reading in the manosphere.

After reading this thread, my husband and I plan to re-watch the movie and see if our opinion has changed. I suspect we will not approve of the movie as wholeheartedly as we did when we first watched it.

I’m also a regular reader over at To Love Honor and Vacuum, and I am conflicted. Adultery is biblical grounds for divorce, and abuse (real abuse, not “emotional abuse” or stuff that gets blown out of proportion because the woman wants an out) and some addictions are things that, pragmatically, could cause a person to need to leave the marital home for a time, with the goal of working toward reconciliation but with the awareness that the separation could become permanent if the home remains physically dangerous for the spouse and children. However, I’ve said ever since I was a teenager that if I were to find myself divorced *for any reason,* including if my husband cheated on me, I would not date or remarry, nor do I believe that others who divorce should date or remarry, at least not if they claim the name of Christ.

So I take a hard line on divorce, and when I’ve been in the situation to counsel a friend who was considering divorce, I did all I could to convince her not to leave her husband. (I failed, and our friendship fizzled, stating from the point when she started sleeping around, especially since that started while she was still married and while I’d allowed her to stay in my home specifically in an attempt to prevent the “need” to accept lodging elsewhere, but even her husband–who I barely knew but with whom I had serious disagreements–acknowledged my efforts and thanked me for trying.)

It has seemed to me that Sheila took a similarly hard line, and I believe she does in her own life, though it seems maybe not quite as hard for other Christian women. I don’t think I’ve read between the lines as deeply as Dalrock had, to notice the exceptions for porn and possible exceptions for “emotional abuse” that Dalrock pointed out in this post. I think she does do valuable work in encouraging women to work on their marriages and to be more as Christ would want them to be. I’ve been encouraged by her, and I never have come away from one of her blogs feeling as if she were advocating divorce in any way. But for those women who are looking for an out, apparently there are some pretty big holes.

Not sure the point of this comment, really, other than to provide the perspective of another Christian woman who is struggling with noticing just how tolerant we Christians have become of things that really are intolerable.
[D: Thanks Deborah and welcome to the blog. When you rewatch fireproof you might want to have a hard copy of my synopsis handy so you can confirm (or not) what I observed.]

van Rooinek says:
“Except for the all-important CELIBACY aspect. Divorced Christians — in all or very nearly all cases –are required to either remain celibate, or repair their original marriage.”

Huh? Celibacy means “the unmarried state.” I know it’s misused a lot these days as if it were “sexual abstinence”, but that ain’t what it actually means, especially in a “religious” sexual discussion. If you mean “sexual abstinence,” where is that requirement found in scripture?

The real main problems with Fireproof are two fold:
1) The Wife wouldn’t be acting that way, given the premise. So the interactions felt odd. (Kirk’s Alpha type wasn’t actually acting Beta until the Love Dare bit)
2) The advice *will not work, by any measure, in nearly all circumstances*.

The basic concept of the “Love Dare” would work in a very small set of issues. If *she* did it for him, after she nearly got into an affair, pulled back and he wasn’t sure she could trust him. So in a really weird twist, Cameron’s Mother doing it would actually make sense and work. This isn’t something that would normally work for a man. (It could when he’s a near philandering Alpha type and he’s trying to win back her trust. Only in that context does it make it work. But the wife would need to be wronged in a very specific context)

So, like way too much stuff in the Church, the thinking only applies to keeping the “rampaging hordes” type man in line. Well, there haven’t been many around for a long while. But, if we keep it up, the message will be useful again, after the complete collapse.

“Except for the all-important CELIBACY aspect. Divorced Christians — in all or very nearly all cases –are required to either remain celibate, or repair their original marriage. Legions don’t. Hence a good many of the marriages in the modern Evangelical church, may in fact be simply ongoing adulterous affairs that the church should be rebuking, not accepting (or worse, performing ceremonies for)”

But a lot of divorced secular divorced fathers stay celibatary because they find women who will accept their terms unattractive and they don’t want to oblige more attractive women who want their money and sperm.

Aqua Net wrote:The Villages, which is a prominant and wellknown retirement community in Florida, has high std rates.

So does Rwanda, for some of the same reasons. In both cases, the large female majorities encourage the women there to share a few “players” because it’s either that or sleep alone. It’s very strange that you’re gushing over it like it’s a positive.

They just DON’T to want to live with the men they are gettin’ jiggy widdit with

If we’re to trust Dalrock’s statements (and I do), the simpler explanation is that they’re making a virtue of necessity. “They don’t want to” translates to “there’s no one available” when the rationalization hamster spin is removed from the equation.

and have to live out their last decades being a maid, nurse and cook to a sick, dying man.

Some of the happiest and sanest women I know live their lives in service of others. While some of the biggest pieces of work have chosen the “Eat, Pray, Love” path of self-indulgence. Go figure.

You are one of the honorable few. A breath of grace. Once, just once, I’d like to hear a divorced Christian — of either sex, of any denomination — come right out and say,

“I’m not looking for a new relationship, because I’m not biblically free to remarry”.

Actually Van, there is such a one. She’s on my blog roll and has been living a holy, semi-single life for over a decade (15 years?) since her husband abandoned the faith and left her. He never filed for divorce apparently and she hasn’t either.And she won’t. If he repents and comes home she’s said she’ll welcome him back. Her blog is Tomato Soup Cake. She’s been raising the kids and homeschooling while running a home business. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with her personally and she is one of the sweetest Christians I’ve ever met.

caballarius1 says“If you mean “sexual abstinence,” where is that requirement found in scripture?”

1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

1Thessalonians 4:3-5
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel (human body) in sanctification and honour;
Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:

Hebrews 13:4
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers (single people who engage in promiscuous sex outside of marriage) and adulterers (married people who cheat) God will judge.

1 Corinthians 7:8,9
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

I am reminded many years ago a self-righteous Christian man saw me doing “deep breathing exercises” when an attractive, scantily dressed young thang’ walked by. He told me it is as sinful to think about it as it is to do it. So, I asked him if that meant it would be 1/32 sinful if I did the deed with her every morning for 15 minutes, rather than thinking about it for 8 hours. He threw a tantrum, (in God’s name, of course) but I noted he never answered the question.

Have you read Piper’s paper? I suggest that you do and you will see that he is taking everything in context.

All those who complain that the Bible only talks about the man divorcing the woman, that is just how it was. However, a woman whose husband had been unfaithful was able to apply to the local synagogue to have her husband be compelled to divorce her, whether he wanted to or not.

“The Villages, which is a prominant and wellknown retirement community in Florida, has high std rates.”

Ray Manta, “It’s very strange that you’re gushing over it like it’s a positive.”

Exact qoute? I’m repulsed at the thought of anyone over 50 naked. They most certainly should not be having sex.

“some of the happiest and sanest women I know live their lives in service of others. While some of the biggest pieces of work have chosen the “Eat, Pray, Love” path of self-indulgence.”

The Eat Pray Love path ended in “love”. she ended up caring for a man. I was disappointed. You’d think after experiencing the bliss of celibate ashram life she’d do that for the rest of her life, but nope, she wanted d*ck. she’s exactly the type of woman who live out her last years in service to some dude.

“I’m divorced. I am not dating. Not because I think re-marriage is not allowed (it is) but because in my circumstances it would hurt mey boys.”

Chris, I have to say that I respect this. The only people who have any right to date, live with together or marry are people WITOUT children. I’ve said earlier that I’m single and childless by choice but because of my age most of my peers are single parents who are, of all things, dating. It is very harmful to the children. I think the desire to marry and have kids hits when people are in their 20s. Its like something that overcomes them in their still naive youthful years. But when they get older they don’t want, so they divorce. But then they’re stuck with the kids. And then they want to live as if they had no kids – dating, going out, dancing, romancing, floating in and out of relationships. Had they just waited out their 20s then they would have made it to their 30s without any baggage and could be living the free life they want now, but without baggage.

Obviously you are not that type but I think the majority of people in my country are. They get married and have kids too soon, in the flush of youth, and then later are like “oh sh*t, I really wanna be single, childless and free, like my friend Aqua Net”.

Maybe if we made having kids harder, like having to go through training for it and get a degree of some sort, or a license, that less of these kinds of people would be bringing kids into the world.

caballarius1 says
‘“If you mean “sexual abstinence,” where is that requirement found in scripture?”

Sedulous says:
“1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”

“Fornication ” is replace in newer translation with “sexual sin” which in the Greek manuscripts was the word porneia, which was the word used by New Testament writers for all the Old Testament sexual sins. Those are certain types of incest, adultery (defined in Deuteronomy as a man copulating with another man’s wife), pagan cultic prostitution, bestiality, male homosexuality, prostitution by a priest’s daughter, marriage virginity fraud. That’s a fairly limited list of activities requiring abstinence.

Sedulous says:
“1Thessalonians 4:3-5
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel (human body) in sanctification and honour;
Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:”

We’ve already covered fornication/porneia above. However, “the lust of concupiscence” is interesting. “Lust” here is from two Greek words used together, “pathei” (passionate) and “epithumia” (strong desire). Concupiscence does not appear in the Greek manuscript, not a surprise since it is a word of later Latin origin, but was added by the translators. Nothing at all here about sexual abstinence than what is covered the “porneia” ban.

Sedulous says:
“Hebrews 13:4
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers (single people who engage in promiscuous sex outside of marriage) and adulterers (married people who cheat) God will judge.”

Whoremongers is the Elizabethan English word for pimp. Monger means “seller”. Since a fishmonger sells fish, a cheesemonger sells cheese, and an ironmonger sells iron, what do you think a whoremonger is selling? That’s right, whores! However, the Greek word translated as whoremonger is actually “pornos” meaning a practitioner of “porneias” (the sex acts on the Old Testament banned list). The word “adulterers” in the passage is translated correctly. It’s the Greek “moichous”. Adultery does not mean “married people who cheat.” Cheat at what? Poker? Dice? Taxes? Adultery in the Bible means just what it says in Deuteronomy, a man, his marital status is irrelevant, copulating with another man’s wife.

Again, as in your two previous Bible quotes, the only restrictions are the restrictions already in effect from the Old Testament law. They are in no way a blanket command for “sexual abstinence.”

Sedulous says:
“1 Corinthians 7:8,9
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
The word “contain” refers to sexual abstinence.”

Nope, the word is “enkrateuontai” does not mean “sexual abstinence”, but rather “self discipline.” The very same word is used in chapter 9 of the same book referring to the self discipline of the elite athlete in training for competition.

In none of these verses is there any requirement for “sexual abstinence” beyond what is required by the Council of Jerusalem in the book of Acts, which is to abstain from the acts on the “porneia” list.

Sedulous says:
“Also…celibate
Entry from World dictionary
adjective
abstaining from marriage and sexual relations, typically for religious reasons:a celibate priest
having or involving no sexual relations:a celibate lifestyle
noun
a person who abstains from marriage and sexual relations:he’s attracted and attractive to women and yet he lives as a celibate

Sedulous, these are new usages. How was it that the popes could retain the papacy while living with their mistresses and fathering children left and right? They never violated their vow of celibacy by marrying. The old definition of celibacy is this one; Latin caelebs = unmarried. Either way, it’s unbiblical.

UK Fred says:
“Have you read Piper’s paper? I suggest that you do and you will see that he is taking everything in context.”

Yes, I read it before I commented on it, which is why I mentioned that Corinthians only says the divorcing woman can’t remarry. The man is free to do so. Piper’s paper is terrible. He makes the claim that “porneia” in Matthew is a reference to “premarital sex” by the wife being put away, which it is not. Premarital sex is not one of the sex acts prohibited by the Law and included in the NT usage of “porneia”, such as adultery, bestiality, virginity fraud, etc. Porneia is used here by Christ, just as it is in the rest of the NT, to mean any or all of the criminal sexual offenses. Piper has to bend the heck out of the passage to fit his goal, it’s really quite shocking. The death penalty was still on the books for adultery and the other elements of “porneia” at the time Christ spoke these words, but the Romans apparently were blocking its enforcement and eventually pressured the Sanhedrin, shortly after the time of Christ, to replace the death penalty with flogging as the punishment for these offenses. The obvious reason Christ permitted divorce in the instance of the wife committing a sex crime was that without the Romans blocking the Mosaic Law, she’d be dead and out of the picture anyway. I could go on and on, but I won’t.

UK Fred says:
“All those who complain that the Bible only talks about the man divorcing the woman, that is just how it was. However, a woman whose husband had been unfaithful was able to apply to the local synagogue to have her husband be compelled to divorce her, whether he wanted to or not.”

I’d appreciate if you could provide me a reference for that. Jewish women had no ability to divorce, under the Law of Moses, for any reason in the 1st century, and certainly not because her husband had other women. The Jews exercised polygyny until around 1000 AD, when it was banned for the Ashkenazi. Other Jews were not subject to the restriction and were free to do so right up to current times. Roman women who were in a specific type of marriage called a “without manus” marriage had the power to divorce their husbands, but not the Jewish women. I suppose there is always the possibility of a renegade synagogue or rabbi.

How strange. I wouldn’t waste 10 minutes, let alone 10% of my income, on the church if I didn’t believe. Tell us, how many are there like you, percentage wise? (Since you seem to have the women figured out fairly well).

10% of my income?!? That doesn’t happen. Two of my biggest clients go to church there, so I show up three Sunday mornings per month for no other reason than that. I do get involved in senior citizen outreach “ministries”, but that’s because I truly enjoy it and I’m paying it forward out of gratitude for a similar outreach program that deeply enriches my own grandmother’s life three states away. It has nothing to do with God (for me). It has everything to do with Good.

To directly answer your question:

Jesus: “Thou knowest the commandments; Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.”

Some Christian Guy: “All these have I kept from my youth up.”

Jesus: “Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”

How often do you bump into a Christian who has sold all that he had and given it to the poor?

There’s your answer.

Church is nothing but a social club for what I consider to be a rather fine group of people. Churches provide a great service, help the community, and supports parents in their efforts to raise children with a foundation of decency and morals. I support the church wholeheartedly, but people calling themselves “Christians” or “Christ-like” is like someone calling himself an artist because he visits the Louvre once a week.

Aqua net wrote:Exact qoute? I’m repulsed at the thought of anyone over 50 naked.
They most certainly should not be having sex.

Heh heh. That’s you, in the not-so-distant future.
You really seem to have a lot of trouble making any kind of argument that isn’t based on your own personal frame of reference. I’m not the only one here who has noticed that.

Ferdinand Bardamu wrote an article on The Spearhead called “The Eternal Solipsism of the Female Mind”. You provide an unusually clear example of solipsistic thinking.

The Eat Pray Love path ended in “love”. she ended up caring for a man. I was disappointed. You’d think after experiencing the bliss of celibate ashram life she’d do that for the rest of her life, but nope, she wanted d*ck.

Evidently she found that the bliss of celibate ashram life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There’s also no meal ticket at the end of the tunnel.

she’s exactly the type of woman who live out her last years in service to some dude.

A woman like that who dumps her husband to “find herself” is a lot more likely to spend her last years alone and unloved. Even her children (assuming she has them) will tend to avoid her – after all, why should they be any more loyal to her than she was to her family?

Phil Samson says:
“Jesus: “Thou knowest the commandments; Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.”
Some Christian Guy: “All these have I kept from my youth up.”
Jesus: “Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”
How often do you bump into a Christian who has sold all that he had and given it to the poor?”

None, since we’re not living in 30 AD and being personally invited to join the 12 apostles by Christ himself. Notice that Christ didn’t even make this a requirement of Peter, James, and John, who returned to their fishing boats, that makes the boats unliquidated business assets, after Christ’s execution. It was a requirement for this man alone.

I agree with Van, if I believed there was nothing to it, it would completely change my philosophy of life; no pretenses about so-called “morality.” At that point, the prime directive becomes about slaying your enemies and adding his women to your harem. It’s all about advancing one’s genes and taking out those of the other guy. On the other hand, I completely understand attending a particular church for strictly commercial reasons. A large number of my clients attend the same local mega-mega-church, so joining there would make a lot of $en$e.

I agree with Van, if I believed there was nothing to it, it would completely change my philosophy of life; no pretenses about so-called “morality.” At that point, the prime directive becomes about slaying your enemies and adding his women to your harem.

….And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

caballarius1 says:“Fornication ” is replace in newer translation with “sexual sin” which in the Greek manuscripts was the word porneia, which was the word used by New Testament writers for all the Old Testament sexual sins. Those are certain types of incest, adultery (defined in Deuteronomy as a man copulating with another man’s wife), pagan cultic prostitution, bestiality, male homosexuality, prostitution by a priest’s daughter, marriage virginity fraud. That’s a fairly limited list of activities requiring abstinence.”

“Premarital sex is not one of the sex acts prohibited by the Law and included in the NT usage of “porneia”, such as adultery, bestiality, virginity fraud, etc.”

I’m fine with most of your list, but the virginity fraud issue IS a premarital sex issue – Deuteronomy 22:13-21. If the man believed his new wife wasn’t a virgin, they investigated the matter. If the “tokens of virginity” weren’t found, she was stoned for whoredom (premarital sex). Think of Israel and the women of Moab – Numbers 25.

But you’re probably referring to the passages where, if a man seduces a woman who wasn’t betrothed, he was required to marry her and/or pay for her dowry. But does the lack of a death penalty prove that it’s acceptable behavior for the Christian? Stealing wasn’t usually punished by death in the law either, but it’s still a sin in the NT.

Most fornication probably falls in this category. Fornication includes sexual intercourse between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman, regardless of cultural context, motive or payment.

caballarius1 says:“However, “the lust of concupiscence” is interesting. “Lust” here is from two Greek words used together, “pathei” (passionate) and “epithumia” (strong desire) … Nothing at all here about sexual abstinence than what is covered the “porneia” ban.”

Concupiscence is a big word for lust. In the context of fornication, Paul was teaching Christians that they shouldn’t live life pursuing a “passionate, strong (sexual) desire” outside of, or against marriage, like the unbelievers who don’t know God. Paul said “abstain from fornication”. For the married, this means don’t commit adultery. For the unmarried, it means complete sexual abstinence. You really think the early unmarried Christians engaged in casual sex with God’s blessing?

caballarius1 says:“Adultery does not mean “married people who cheat.” Cheat at what? Poker? Dice? Taxes?
Adultery in the Bible means just what it says in Deuteronomy, a man, his marital status is irrelevant, copulating with another man’s wife.”

I was referring to married people who cheat on their spouses. In Deuteronomy, both the man and woman were guilty of this sin. Leviticus 20:10 Deuteronomy 22:22

As per our previous discussion a few posts ago, just because the masculine is used to teach the concept, doesn’t mean the female is exempt.

caballarius1 says:“Nope, the word is “enkrateuontai” does not mean “sexual abstinence”, but rather “self discipline.” The very same word is used in chapter 9 of the same book referring to the self discipline of the elite athlete in training for competition.”

“egkrateuomai” means:
1) to be self-controlled, continent
a) to exhibit self-government, conduct, one’s self temperately
b) in a figure drawn from athletes, who in preparing themselves for the games abstained from unwholesome food, wine, and sexual indulgence

In the context of an athlete, it refers to the training discipline that an athlete undergoes. In the context of celibacy, it refers to sexual abstinence. What other self discipline could Paul possibly be referring to? Paul stated that a person lacking this self discipline should marry, otherwise they would burn with unfulfilled sexual desire. None of Paul’s teaching here would make sense if the unmarried were engaging in casual promiscuous sex.

Paul said they should “abide even as I” How did Paul live as a single man? Was Paul sexually active? Did he pump and dump females in the church, only avoiding the pagan temple prostitutes or priest’s daughters?

caballarius1 says:“How was it that the popes could retain the papacy while living with their mistresses and fathering children left and right? They never violated their vow of celibacy by marrying.”

Yes they did. If they married or had affairs with mistresses (fornication) they weren’t celibate. You can’t change the definition of the word just because of someone’s behavior.

None, since we’re not living in 30 AD and being personally invited to join the 12 apostles by Christ himself. Notice that Christ didn’t even make this a requirement of Peter, James, and John, who returned to their fishing boats, that makes the boats unliquidated business assets, after Christ’s execution. It was a requirement for this man alone.

Thanks for the shining example of cherry-picking from the scripture that which suits your opinion. I do believe that’s the underlying premise of Dalrock’s article to begin with, is it not? The bible says to be submissive to your husband, BUT it also says blah blah blah so I’m getting a divorce.

“Unliquidated assets?” Brilliant loophole. Kind of like the one where the bible says to love thy neighbor, but since you don’t technically live next door to me, I can tell you to fuck off. Not sure that’s really what it means, but it suits me right now, so…

The bible is filled with contradictions, innuendo, and blurred lines between literal and philosophical translations of intended meaning. That’s why arguing with a Christian can be as useless as arguing with a woman. The eternal solipsism of the female mind is nothing more than a form of unshakable faith in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary, Oprah is her priest, her feelings are her Holy Spirit, Cosmo is her bible, and Heaven is being cuddled up to an aggressive, attractive Alpha male who just cooked dinner and only has eyes for her.

Man Aqua Net you need to start a cult and get 30 million female followers past their years of fertility. And i’ll do my part and organize a cult of aqua net sevice men that will allow your cult members to enjoy the freedoms and fun of the cock carousel on their journey to infertility and spinsterhood.

*lol*… this and your other stuff to Agua in this thread is hilarious…
Hey Aqua, how would you rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10?, you outlier you!

My Aunt is a very strong Catholic, although all her children are all agnostic/atheist. I’m thinking of forwarding her to this blog poster after introducing her to the prevalent misandry in the so-con/traditionalist establishment, at a recent family gathering.

Since the concept of Don’t Get Married keeps coming up. Is there any prenupital strategy you suggest men can pursue?

My advice to (beta) men is to marry if they can find a woman worthy of marriage. But I don’t deny the problems with the legal and moral framework men submit themselves to when marrying. My point here isn’t that men shouldn’t marry, but that they need to be aware of the reality of the situation. The church has fooled an entire generation of men (several generations actually) into thinking it will back marriage, but if trouble occurs it will very often throw the man and his marriage under the bus.

To answer your specific question though, I think my answer to men and women is basically the same. If you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you. Stay away from the uncommitted SMP or at least the worst parts, but if you are going in go in with your eyes fully open and under as close to your own terms as possible. Don’t expect anyone to make the experience “safe” or fair for you. I wish I had a better answer. Game will help men improve their odds either way, so learning game will help men a great deal.

FWIW, there is a movement out there regarding the easy attitude that the vast bulk of Christian churches take towards divorce. One example of those taking issue with this attitude can be found here: http://www.timcoody.com/articles.html

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
–Luke 16:18

Caballarious has demonstrated an ignorance of Scripture regarding remarriage that mirrors that of most of the church today, or if not ignorance, certainly an understanding that disregards what Christ says in Luke, quoted above.

There are those who hold to what Christ has said there, who believe that marriage is a covenant, and regardless of what the world says, or what a judge says, do not consider themselves to be free to marry again after a divorce. Obviously, they aren’t common, but they’re out there.

The exception given in Scripture is porneia, but only in the Matthew passages, and that exception is misunderstood by modern readers who don’t know the Greek, and don’t know the problems of that era, and don’t know the Septuagint O.T. that the early Christians were quoting 85%+ of the time, and who don’t notice that “porneia” is used (in lists of various immoral things forbidden to Christians) as a separate item from adultery and fornication, and distinct from them.

“Porneia” in Matthew 5 and 19 indicates sexual contact between people who cannot licitly marry, as it does in I Corinthians 5. Fathers may not marry daughters, not even stepdaughters; brothers may not marry sisters, not even half-sisters. It is not merely a matter of biological consanguinuity, either; a man may not marry his stepdaughter because the prior covenant with his wife made the stepdaughter his daughter by covenant; a man may not marry his stepmother because the prior covenant between the woman and her husband made her the man’s mother by covenant. A covenant, in the Old Testament view, makes people family members and establishes a permanent family relationship between them. Thus the Apostle Paul’s outrage in I Corinthians 5: Here was a guy who had “had his father’s wife”; as far as Paul was concerned, if the concept of the covenant was a valid concept at all, this was like the man having sex with his own mother.

Nothing breaks a God-created covenantal bond save when it is subsumed into and supplanted by a higher one. This is why when a Christian really genuinely marries another Christian, what is formed between them is until death; the civil law can call two previously married Christians “divorced” as often as it likes but God calls them “married” and insists, through the words of the Apostle Paul, that they must remain single or else be reconciled.

The sole exceptions are found in Jesus’ words in Matthew 19, “except for porneia,” and in the Apostle Paul when he makes an exception for those whose marriages were not Christian marriages to begin with, where one spouse becomes a Christian and the other divorces them because they don’t want to be bound to a Christian. This sort of thing is not, plausibly, a Christian marriage: A God-forged spiritual bond reflecting the union of Christ and His Church. A pagan marriage which gets broken up because one spouse becomes Christian can hardly qualify.

Anyhow, this was the consistent Christian teaching on marriage from the time of the apostles through to the divorce desires of King Henry VIII. In all that period one can find no more than two writings suggesting remarriage after the break-up of a Christian marriage is permissible, and those are pretty minor deviations, as when apostasy is given as a ground for a Christian spouse leaving a formerly-Christian spouse. Assuming this view is theologically correct, a person who rips himself out of the Body of Christ has also ripped himself apart from any other “cell” in the Body of Christ to whom he was previously married. Sounds reasonable. But the idea that a person can be in the Body of Christ, married to another person in the Body of Christ, and then separate from that person and unite to another while the first still lives, is a foreign notion to Christian thought.

If this view is incorrect, if remarriage is really permitted for Christians, then I ask you: What on earth was the Holy Spirit doing for all those centuries? Was he away on a journey, or taking a nap, like Baal in the story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel?

We were promised the Spirit by Jesus; and that He would “lead us into all truth.” Yet the understanding of marriage granted by the apostles to their immediate successors — men like Ignatius and Evodius and Polycarp, many of them martyrs — in church leadership was somehow wrong? And those who came after them were wrong, also? And those after them, for centuries on end, until, suddenly, in the debauched and sexually confused post-Christian west, when we are twenty centuries divorced from the culture and languages of the early Christians, we have suddenly figured out that all our predecessors were wrong. We have suddenly, belatedly, discovered what Jesus really taught about marriage. We modern westerners understand the thought of the first century near-east better than the people of the second-century near east, apparently.

What’re the odds of that, really?

We have a choice. We can either assume that when Jesus said, “except for porneia,” He meant “except for all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery (even though adultery is listed separately from porneia in nearby passages in Matthew),” and that, in that case, He forgot to give that exception in Mark and Luke, and the Apostle Paul was going overboard when he didn’t allow for that exception in his own writings. In that case pornography is adultery (looking at a woman with lust in one’s heart), and also qualifies, and the person who divorces a spouse for reasons of pornography doesn’t become an adulterer when they remarry. (And by-the-way, all our Christian ancestors were wrong about all this, until us.)

Or, we can assume that when Jesus said, “except for porneia,” He was pointing out that unions which are immoral to begin with are not valid in God’s eyes and can be repented from. In that case, Jesus (in Matthew) still agrees with Jesus (in Mark and Luke). Jesus also now agrees with the Apostle Paul (“If they separate, they must remain single or else be reconciled to each other.”). The reaction of the Apostles to this difficult teaching (“Wow. In that case it’s better not to marry at all!”) can be more easily understood. The New-Testament-to-Old-Testament parallels between Acts 15’s list of forbidden items (meat sacrificed before idols, blood, that which is strangled, and porneia) and the similar items listed in Leviticus 17-18 is retained (meat sacrificed before idols, blood, that which is strangled, and “…None of you shall approach a close relative to have sexual intercourse with her. I am the LORD.”)

And it allows us to trust the teachings of the ancient Christians on this topic, right up to the years 370-400 A.D. in which those same Christians finally drew firm conclusions about what the canon of the New Testament was.

(A lot of people inadequately appreciate the fact that the first Christian writer to list, as the proper contents of the New Testament, the same 27 books we use today was bishop Athanasius in his Easter letter, in 370 AD. Prior to that, folks had waffled between “just the 4 gospels” and various groups of 22-25 books, often including such well-regarded and orthodox but non-infallible writings as the Didache and the First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians in their canon, and often excluding Hebrews, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation.)

Now when Christians finally settled on the New Testament canon, the process began with excluding books of recent or demonstrably false authorship (the Gnostic gospels, ever popular among theological liberals and deconstructionists). But the final weeding out was largely on the basis of which books agreed with “the traditions of the apostles as handed down to them.”

So did these early Christians like Athanasius understand “the traditions of the apostles” properly, or not?

If they did, we can trust what they concluded about the canon…and also about the Trinity, the two natures of Jesus Christ, and about Christian marriage.

If we’re not sure we can trust what they concluded about the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, and Christian marriage, then how can we trust their conclusions about the canon? And if we can’t trust those, why then what we have is a dubious collection of hopefully infallible but possibly fallible books. Anyone want to go there?

Theological liberals do, of course. But then theological liberals like believing in the moral permissibility of serial monogamy, too, don’t they?

Women are often given “get-out-of-marriage free cards”? Dalrock, please look into the books, “Created to be his Helpmeet”, “Fascinating Womanhood”, “Me, obey him?”, “The Wise Woman”, “The Fruit of her Hands”, and “A Wife after God’s Own Heart”.

Hmm…that didn’t come out right…let me try that again: Dalrock, may I ask if you delete my first post right above as the formatting got messed up? Thanks!

Hopefully this comes out correctly…

@Phil Samson

(The relevant parts of your post are enclosed in – – symbols )

–Thanks for the shining example of cherry-picking from the scripture that which suits your opinion.–

His reasoning is quite sound – note how this command was directed *specifically* at the rich man and no one else – you are making the error of assuming advice given to one person is a universal statement or command, which from context it clearly is not. Think about it – if you request someone to do something, that does not imply anything about others being asked to do it – only if you say “You (plural addressing the group) need to do this or that.” If I asked a friend of mine to come over and help me with my car, by your logic, I am somehow asking all people to do the same. The overarching observation in that Gospel passage is the wealth was an obstacle to the Kingdom that this rich man had to overcome…recall that part about sin being described as so grievous that it would be better to maim yourself than to let it consume you. In this case, greed and lust for material positions consumed this man, like alcohol to an alcoholic, and he had to get away from it completely, go ‘cold turkey’, so to speak.

Note how in the Scriptures almost none of the early Christians or even those who followed Jesus during His time on Earth did this – do you not think He would have called them out on this had it been a command for them? Check throughout the NT – you will find that most Christians remained settled in their communities – since the ones who did sell their stuff did so since they were following Jesus around on Earth and thus did not need their house or business anymore. Once He rose and ascended back into Heaven, this was no longer the case so Christians in general did not do this.

–I do believe that’s the underlying premise of Dalrock’s article to begin with, is it not? The bible says to be submissive to your husband, BUT it also says blah blah blah so I’m getting a divorce.–

The Bible’s position on divorce is quite clear and is a command given unequivocally for a ll Christians, not a statement that at one point in history happened to be given to a particular person and was recorded in the Bible. Big difference.

–“Unliquidated assets?” Brilliant loophole. Kind of like the one where the bible says to love thy neighbor, but since you don’t technically live next door to me, I can tell you to fuck off. Not sure that’s really what it means, but it suits me right now, so…
The bible is filled with contradictions, innuendo, and blurred lines between literal and philosophical translations of intended meaning. That’s why arguing with a Christian can be as useless as arguing with a woman. —

This is not a religion debate blog so post your stupid anti-religious rant elsewhere. You make a bold (and ridiculous) series of claims here in this part but naturally make no attempt to defend them or back them up. That sounds quite like a typical woman actually.
Keep that a-tard rationalization hamster spinning!

Someone needs to do a study on the divorce rate for same-sex marriages. The day the same-sex divorce rate is lower than the Christian divorce rate is the day “Christian marriage” loses all credibility. I think with a divorce rate of 38%, American Christians should not talk about marriage and I am a Christian. What a disgrace marriage has become in the Western World.

The trouble with christian marriages is that it is based on a master/slave relationship. Of course, it’s the wife that is place in the slave or submissive role. When someone has no control over their own life, they are bound to look for a way out. Look at how slaves attemepted to escape hundreds of years ago. These people sought freedom. That’s the way it is probably with christian wives. They are told they are to submit, shut up, and that they are so incredibly inferior to their husbands/heads/master. And many christians truly believe this. Just like the slaves of the past, at some point, they feel they must escape this bondage and slavery. This could be part of the reason that christian wives are more likely to leave a marriage. I am not a christian (ex-christian) but I work with many christians (now mostly ex-christians) that see the joy of a marriage that is equal, and not one-sided in regard to power. I knew on woman who said she was a christian. I told her and her husband that I rejected christianity because of the bible’s views on marriage and women. I saw the husband later, and he told me it was not discriminatory, but that the husband was the head of the wife. I later told her what he said. She just looked at me, and said “what”. Shorlty later I found out that she had left him. /she told me that she was a grown woman, and did not need a “head” or master. Last I heard, she was doing great, and he was depressed. I think that eventually they will be able to work it out, but their ideas of marriage were way off. She wanted an equal, he wanted an inferior. Outward, he was a real nice person. I think he can be deprogrammed to think of women as equals, but I don’t know if she will ever go back. I think the fact that christianity tries to make a marriage into a master/slave type hierarchy is why christian marriages are the one most likely to end in divorce. No one, no matter what some submissive women say, really enjoy having absolutely no say in their own life. Maybe some do-but seriously, most don’t.

There’s always hierarchy, it’s life. Nothing works without it. Someone always has to make the decision. Imagine a military without a rank system and what you imagine will be chaos. Marriage itself has to be based on a rank system. You’re placing the care of children, finances and well being into an institution that caters to society as a whole. Someone has to decide what to do next. Christianity believes it needs to be men and quite frankly, I can’t find fault with that. Men, on average, are more logical and reason based than women, women are, on average, more based in emotion than men. Hardly a good fit for ‘equality’ in marriage if one really thinks about it.

Then again, I’m an evil, white male patriarch and yet you are the one talking about ‘deprogramming’ someone who doesn’t fit your ideal, haha! So, my advice to you, don’t get married and stay single, mmmkay?

Deti, just another one brought up to believe that men are evil and thus the only relationship a person can have with an evil male patriarch is master/slave.

@equalityforall -the man you mentioned is fortunate. He successfully avoided a total loss – she is not a Christian.
A couple looking to get married should have common goals and values.
The woman you mentioned clearly was more concerned about her personal autonomy than anything else.
Christian marriage hierarchy is as follows:
The Father, Christ, Authorities, Man, Women,Children.
The man is to sacrifice for the woman and the woman is to obey the man ( unless illegal or immoral)
Its called a “reciprocal relationship” – if what isnt mentioned “equitable” then just maybe your perception is biased
.

I think that a lot of men want the benefits of leadership and not the responsibility, and that a lot of women want to benefits of having a husband to protect and provide, but not the responsibilities that go with that. When the man is leading and taking responsibility and the woman is submitting to his leadership marriage is a good deal for all involved.

@ Starviolet – “I think that a lot of men want the benefits of leadership and not the responsibility”
With “power” comes “responsibility”- it is a package deal. Universal law of reaping and sowing
Going to suggest you might be looking at the wrong end of the telescope.
Women want the power but not the responsibility.
If you think this is incorrect – consider the divorce courts and how men are forced to pay for frivolous divorce, unfair custody, and unfair spousal support.

Sorry my dear – woman dont “pony” up and take “responsibility” – they take the “power”. To say otherwise is delusional and ex-facie given the bias seen in the family law courts and outcomes of divorced couples.

A tiny minority of Western(American) women show “equity” and “class” as a person.

Starviolet:
“I think that a lot of men want the benefits of leadership and not the responsibility,”
Close, but not quite. Most men DO want the responsibility; men are wired to lead, and responsibility is a huge part of leadership. The problem is a two headed snake: Men have not been TAUGHT to be responsible to anything except women, and men are actively discouraged from actually leading. The message feminist society gives to men ( legally, socially, familially) is, “Don’t lead. Use your ‘leadership’ drive to protect and support women while we play at leading. Oh, and clean up the messes we make.”

If modern men were allowed to lead, and allowed to take credit for their leadership, the ones who “don’t want” responsibility would be in the minority. Nobody should be surprised by the number of men who are flipping the bird at “Responsibility,” and taking their leadership elsewhere.

@ michal singer – I am not sure that the way that custody is handled in this country is unfair. Women handle most of the child care in this country, and women and men seem to want it that way. It is no surprise to me that women end up with custody more often after the divorce when they did most of the child care before the divorce. If fathers pay for most of the child’s expenses before the divorce then I do not see why this would suddenly change after either. I know of one divorced couple where the father worked part time and took care of the kids and the mother earned most of the money. After they divorced the courts made them stick to that arrangement.

I’m not sure what you mean by unfair spousal support. What makes it unfair?

@suz – I don’t think that modern men need permission to lead. Leaders don’t usually sit back and wait for someone to give permission.

It used to be that men routinely received custody of the children in a divorce, because husbands were FINANCIALLY responsible for the children. Women now routinely receive primary residential custody after a divorce not because the children need their mothers more or because the mothers are “better” than fathers at caring for the children. The main reason mothers want custody post-divorce is because they know they will receive a legislatively-determined percentage of the father’s income. This is not discretionary and not decided on case by case bases. It’s automatic; the money is simply deducted from his paycheck. If there are two children it is usually about a third of his net income. What’s more — no father in an an intact household spends a third of his income on food, clothing and necessities for the children. The money is pure windfall to the mother, who can use it for whatever she wishes. The mother is accountable to no one for her use of child support money. She simply receives an income stream from her ex husband for as long as the children are minors. Many times he is also required to insure the children and put them through college as well, even though they are not members of his household. He is impoverished and penalized; she is rewarded simply for divorcing a man she no longer wants to be married to.

Unfair spousal support — we live in a society in which we are told constantly that women are just the same as men; and that women have equal earning power. If they have equal earning power, then they should not look to ex husbands for money over and above child support. Moreover, it is the height of hubris and chutzpah for a wife to cheat on her husband and force him to file for divorce, then demand alimony because she will have no other means of monetary support. Alimony is determined not by the demanding spouse’s fault, but simply by whether a court thinks an order for alimony would be “fair”, i.e. whether she needs it.

re Leadership: Star, you don’t seem to know much about modern society. We live in a society in which women in general bristle and chafe against any kind of male leadership, especially that of a husband. Most women today view marriages as “equal partnerships” and relationships in which personal “happiness” and “fulfillment” are the overriding goals (contrary to the real purpose of a marriage, which is to provide stability and safety for the children born to the marriage). Women are told all their lives they don’t have to take orders from anyone, they don’t have to submit to anyone, and they don’t have to settle for anything less than the best. And finally, women have an entire arsenal of social and legal weaponry at their disposal. The police, Child Protective Services, social workers, lawyers, the courts — all are ready to step in at a moment’s notice to save a poor, put-upon woman who points a finger at her husband and says “I feel unsafe” because “he yelled at me”.

Well, did he hit you? did he point a gun at you? Did he threaten you?

“No. He wasn’t nice to me. We were having a fight and he raised his voice at me. And we have had sex at times when he wanted to but I didn’t. I feel unsafe. Arrest him.”

And the police HAVE to arrest him.

So that’s why today’s modern woman doesnt’ think she needs to follow a man’s leadership.

@Star. Here is the USA the divorce disbursement from the mans paycheck is 50% for spousal and child support (these are the states I have seen like CA, AZ ).
Keep in mind he is taxed @ apprx 38% and child support is not tax deductible while spousal support is.
Lets do the math – a guy making $100k a year is expected to live on about $19k a year (+/- about $3k)
Why do you think Canadian and American men are leaving their divorced spouses / children to foreign countries ????

Thanks Deti, couldn’t have said it any better. Right on the money. Don’t worry though, Star’s hamster will come to the rescue with a rationalisation based on the, ‘you all are wrong, you angry and bitter losers!’ reasoning and then move onto the, ‘you’re all freaks’ and ‘I hope you all die!” clichés commonly used to brand men with thoughts a woman doesn’t like.

1. I don’t think that you can claim that the main reason that women want custody is for the child support. Most women want their children because they love and want their children.

2. According to this report from 2004 ( I couldn’t find a newer one, but if you find one share it) cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2004.pdf the median child support payment is $280 and he average $350. This is not even half the costs of raising the average child. I don’t think that the typical woman is getting a “windfall” after divorce. I’m sure that there are some cases where women get huge child support settlements (I hear p.diddy pays tens of thousands a month) but I don’t think ridiculous child support payments are typical. I guess we could make women account for how they spend that $350 every month, but in most cases if the kids are not naked and living outdoors and have eaten lately then where the money went is quite obvious.

3. We may be told that women and men have the same earning power, but it isn’t true. Men earn more than women on average. I think that whether or not alimony is paid should depend on the circumstances. A SAHW of 30 plus years shouldn’t be expected to go out at sixty and earn a living just because the marriage failed. That is different than a man being forced to support his ex who earns almost as much as he does and can take care of herself. Men can also receive alimony. I know a woman who is paying it. I don’t think that fault should matter as much since the failure of a relationship is almost always the fault of both people, even if one of them cheated. I can see why we have no fault divorce. Imagine how bogged down the courts would be if they had to weigh blame and decide based on that.

@ Michael – please see number 2. I realize that sometimes child support is unfair, but I think that is an exception and not the rule.

Oops I meant to post another link in my post top deti and Michael Singer. Here is the link to a child support study from 2002, which shows that typical child support payment isn’t all that much. census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-99.pdf

The pdf in that post is from 2004 and discusses the costs of raising a child. Basically I am saying that child support doesn’t even cover half the costs of raising a child. In most cases, single parents are not only doing most of the work raising children, they are covering most of the expenses. I don’t think that most men are being treated unfairly by the child support system.

1. a. Fathers love their children too. But in a divorce, more than 90% of the time, mom gets the kids. All she has to do is say in court “I want custody” and she gets it simply on request. She does not have to prove she is a better parent. She does not have to prove she can take better care of the kids. She does not have to do anything other than spawn them and have a pulse, and she is guaranteed a third of her ex husband’s income indefinitely.

b. If the law were changed such that child support would be determined on a case by case basis, through means testing and proveup of actual need, not guaranteed, freely adjusted based on fluctuating income, you can bet there would be a lot fewer divorces. Why? Because the wife’s standard of living would plummet. So you are wrong. I submit the number one reason most women muster it up to leave for unhaaaappiness is because she knows she can get the kids, and therefore the money.

c. My lawyer tells me in a hypothetical divorce, I could count on a court order requiring me to pay child support and alimony comprising 45% of my total net income for at least a year. That would be without regard to fault. In other words, my wife could cheat on me, admit the infidelity under oath, sue me for divorce, be completely at fault, and then take half my income. Sound fair to you?

Fault should matter in determining whether a spouse receives alimony. The only circumstances under which a spouse should receive alimony is if that spouse is not at fault for causing the divorce and the demanding spouse is suing for divorce because of the other’s fault.

IOW, no alimony if she is divorcing under no-fault. No alimony if she is at fault. She forfeits alimony forever with prejudice if she is at fault.

How are men NOT punished for working hard, earning a decent living, serving their country, trusting the system, supporting their wives, loving their children, and doing all of the myriad things that make up masculine leadership? Any modern man who “successfully” navigates out mysandric society, is either amazingly lucky, and/or rich, powerful, and/or smart enough to prepare for and manipulate his outcomes. The odds are against responsible men; if they don’t already have children, why should they bother?

“I don’t think that fault should matter as much since the failure of a relationship is almost always the fault of both people, even if one of them cheated.”

I see. So if she cheats, he is at fault too. In your world, the husband is partly responsible and at fault for his wife’s cheating on him. In your world, she can blame her shortcomings partly on him. To you, women aren’t at fault, even when they are. Women don’t have to be responsible or accountable for their conduct.

Star, I so much would like to hear your view point, it’s not that we haven’t heard it all before but because you actually sound sincere. However, before I do, can we at least start from the objective view point that marriage should be a life union and that this life union is meant primarily for the children but also for the contentment, not happiness mind you, of the parents?

You have to understand our view point before you can understand the situation we are discussing. First, understand that we’re not promoting the ideal of marriage to an abusive spouse, a neglectful spouse or a spouse who cheats. I agree that those are rightful means to divorce or at least separate. However I, and I suspect others here, require that there be an element of proof required for divorce to be fair between the spouses and that this is found under a ‘fault divorce’ system and not found under the current ‘no fault divorce’ system that America finds itself in.

Secondly, you have to understand that men actually do care about their children. I don’t want to sound cruel here, but you cannot honestly expect us to believe that men, by and large, would simply leave their children without care or appropriate education, nourishment and activity? That’s crap. If you take a look at civilised human history, it’s nothing more than men trying to create society that protects both women and children. Inventions and discoveries themselves have led to women and children experiencing massive luxuries and educational opportunities never experienced by the very men who founded your own country. Men wouldn’t have done that, if they didn’t feel it necessary to give the best to the next generation. Our problem comes from the fact that society today seems to think that men are not needed, that men are nothing but selfish creeps who want sex and think of nothing else.

Thirdly, leadership was expected of men in earlier days, men were taught to be strong, willful and to get things done. They were taught the harsh realities of life and were expected to work, go to war and use life and limb to protect those they love and cherish. However, at the same time, those that they were protecting also treated them with respect and civility, they did not taunt them and were gracious for these sacrifices and didn’t merely expect them to be provided. This is turn created a general incentive for men to become leaders, as boys would see and learn for the older men in their group and thus strive for such leadership as there was respect and power to be earned. Also take note that women used to shame men for being cowards and thugs, think world war one and the white feather girls. That’s a classic example of women shaming men to go and die in a war. Today, the protection and provisioning, has to a large extent been taken over by government, in the form of welfare, free medical care, free education, free housing(section 8 I think it’s called?), food stamps, EBT cards and many other entitlement schemes. These entitlements all come from tax payers money, which happens to, by and large, be from men. It just so happens that when the government becomes big, giant daddy, the husband is often to not kicked out the home and divorced frivolously when the women no longer has use for him, usually because the wife is unhaaaaaaaapy; and he is forced to continue to fork out for what he no longer enjoys. That’s slavery.

Lastly, and this is a mere biological fact, women have the children. Men can’t have children and therefore it makes more sense for men to be the providers and protectors to fill the role in the child’s life. It also means that men, by not becoming pregnant, can work longer hours and be more efficient. Take this away, as modern society has done, and fathers are generally moot. And society is and will continue to suffer for this insult as long as men don’t play a role in its stability. Another way to think of this, is to realise that in all the animal kingdom, the role that is missing from most animal groups is ‘Fathers’. Mothers are as common as sand on the beach. However, for civilisation to flourish, the introduction of fathers, and the resources that fatherhood brought as the labour of men was used to build civilisation, were key.

Men are still crucial to society today, the work that men do, from coal miners to executives and directors of companies, and the protection they provide( military, police and otherwise) is as important today as it was in 2000BC, but that role is being given to the government via wealth transfers from the general male population and this is what we are against, not women. It just so happens that this socialistic government welfare system and a woman’s tendency for hypergamy allows women to think that life is all about happiness instead of hard work and commitment, which is why we do, to a large extent, focus on the ease of divorce, the high rate of divorce, how it is promoted by society instead of being shamed and the damage it is causing to children, the economy and the general relationship between the sexes.

“1. a. Fathers love their children too. But in a divorce, more than 90% of the time, mom gets the kids. All she has to do is say in court “I want custody” and she gets it simply on request. She does not have to prove she is a better parent. She does not have to prove she can take better care of the kids. She does not have to do anything other than spawn them and have a pulse, and she is guaranteed a third of her ex husband’s income indefinitely.”
I completely agree that most fathers love their children too. However they do not generally do most or even half of the child care in this country. Mothers do. If the father objects to the mother having custody then he can certainly say so, but if she was good enough to do most of the child care while they were married and he suddenly doesn’t want her to have custody in a divorce, then it certainly seems as if not wanting to pay his ex child support (that will typically cover less than half the costs of raising a child) is what motivates him. After all if the household is typical then before the divorce he was paying most of the expenses and she was doing most of the child care. I don’t see the unfairness in the courts continuing that arrangement. And child support doesn’t go on “indefinitely.” It usually stops at 18, although some men might be forced to help with college or with a develop mentally delayed adult child. It is a shame if that help needs to be forced however.

” If the law were changed such that child support would be determined on a case by case basis, through means testing and proveup of actual need, not guaranteed, freely adjusted based on fluctuating income, you can bet there would be a lot fewer divorces. Why? Because the wife’s standard of living would plummet. So you are wrong. I submit the number one reason most women muster it up to leave for unhaaaappiness is because she knows she can get the kids, and therefore the money.”
As i mentioned in my previous posts, the typical child support payment doesn’t even cover half of the costs of raising a child. Most single mothers are doing most of the work and covering most of the expenses.

” My lawyer tells me in a hypothetical divorce, I could count on a court order requiring me to pay child support and alimony comprising 45% of my total net income for at least a year. That would be without regard to fault. In other words, my wife could cheat on me, admit the infidelity under oath, sue me for divorce, be completely at fault, and then take half my income. Sound fair to you? ”

Would you mind sharing which state you are in? Is your child support and alimony situation typical of men in that state and of the child system overall? Evidence of this?

“Fault should matter in determining whether a spouse receives alimony. The only circumstances under which a spouse should receive alimony is if that spouse is not at fault for causing the divorce and the demanding spouse is suing for divorce because of the other’s fault.

IOW, no alimony if she is divorcing under no-fault. No alimony if she is at fault. She forfeits alimony forever with prejudice if she is at fault.”

We will have to agree to disagree on this. Fault is difficult to determine and finger pointing back and forth in court seems like a waste of everyone’s time.

“@ Star:

“I don’t think that fault should matter as much since the failure of a relationship is almost always the fault of both people, even if one of them cheated.”

I see. So if she cheats, he is at fault too. In your world, the husband is partly responsible and at fault for his wife’s cheating on him. In your world, she can blame her shortcomings partly on him. To you, women aren’t at fault, even when they are. Women don’t have to be responsible or accountable for their conduct.

This tells me everything I need to know.”

Yes I think that the failure of a relationship is usually the fault of both people. For example if a wife rarely has sex and acts like a shrew and then files when he cheats on her is she not at fault as well? Yes, he shouldn’t have cheated but he might not have had she done better in the marriage. That couple can go to court and debate about whether or not she had sex enough, or whether he wanted it too much and would have cheated anyway, but in the end they are both screw ups. I expect men and women to be accountable for their behavior. My comment was gender neutral.

@Starviolet
“Yes I think that the failure of a relationship is usually the fault of both people. For example if a wife rarely has sex and acts like a shrew and then files when he cheats on her is she not at fault as well? Yes, he shouldn’t have cheated but he might not have had she done better in the marriage. That couple can go to court and debate about whether or not she had sex enough, or whether he wanted it too much and would have cheated anyway, but in the end they are both screw ups. I expect men and women to be accountable for their behavior. My comment was gender neutral.”

If someone cheats when they have made a vow of fidelity then the fault is theirs alone. If there are problems in the marriage they should be dealt with, this should be obvious.

Feminist Hater – I agree with you that marriage should be for life. I agree that happiness isn’t the point.

I also agree with you on the necessity of men and the importance of fathers to civilization as a whole and to individual families. I don’t doubt that many men would support their children outside of a court order. Many nonmarried/ divorced parents don’t even bother with them, or together set terms that are more generous than the courts require. However there are enough would be deadbeats around that it makes sense to have laws about child support. Most of the time these laws are not unfair to men.

I don’t think that welfare and government have replaced men in any but the poorest families. I don’t think that welfare gives out much money so it would be a poor provider indeed that could be replaced by the government dole.

I am all for reducing the number of divorces as I think that marriage is in the best interests of most. I do not think that most divorces are filed by women for little to no reason.

I wouldn’t say ‘happiness isn’t the point’ but that to expect marriage to be ‘peaches and cream’ all the time and if it isn’t that’s grounds for divorce; is rather silly. It is impossible to be happy all the time, being content should be a life goal, not happiness. I think we are in agreement here?

I also think you need to realise that the middle class of America is decreasing, not increasing as it should in a healthy society. Thus preparation should be made and the incentives for people to risk their time and wealth to achieve higher levels of earnings should be promoted to counter act this decrease. However, the American State Government, at least under Obama, seems more into increasing welfare and entitlement schemes. This leads to the next issue. The problem with social welfare is that there comes a point in time where living on social grants becomes more financially feasible than actually working. Thus, social welfare creates a poor, criminal and lazy underclass that cannot be controlled under the normal use of law. To control them either requires an increase in welfare to placate them or use of brutality to control their movements and ability to commit crime. I think you can imagine why this should have alarm bells ringing? It also creates a serious problems when the State incentives women to have children out of wedlock by giving them child grants or single mother grants. It also doesn’t help that in order to get those child grants, a man must not be present in the arrangement, else the women is disqualified. Thus divorce or the removal of the father becomes paramount.

As to the middle to upper class, I think on this blog that issue has been discussed numerous times. There’s a commentator called ‘Brendan’ and he’s given us more than enough ‘anecdotal’ evidence to how the UMC(Upper Middle Class) handles these issues. And I think we’ve all come to the astute observation that the wealth of these types can, to a large extent, cocoon them from the failings of their acts. However, as the middle class and even the UMC start to decrease under the strain of the current economic pressure, these problems will seep to those people as well. We’ve also noticed that the wealthy have started to value healthy marriages in stark contrast to years ago when the rich where in fact divorcing at higher rates than those poorer than them. This might well create a divide where only the rich get married and the poor go without. Time will tell I guess?

As to why women file for divorce, please read a few of Dalrock’s posts on the matter. Perhaps Dalrock wouldn’t mind linking them for you to read in a quick post? I advise you to do so. They are rather interesting posts… full of chocolaty goodness!

This article is a good one … it touches on a real issue … First point … I’m sorry but if your husband watches pretty much anything on TV he is watching porn! …. the get out of marriage free card … this definitely insn’t christian … both men and women are equal to blame I’m sure in some towns the women are leaving like its the “thing to do” almost like it was when they got married … and in some towns the men are abusive … to be a Christian means to FORGIVE … Christ said this while taking his last breath … and praying for each other … those are the things which look like a christian marriage … just because you go to church doesn’t make you a christian like the article says, the way people swing to the theories on oprah is really sad and people don’t realize by doing so their actions speak louder than words … they know more than God is the best way to sum it up in a short sentence … Church words humble repent fast are not a part of their lives … keeping up with everyone else is …. money and whose happier because of things is not a Christian marraige … its a real problem … half the people getting divorced are turning gay … and the older generation who doesn’t have a clue thinks its gentic they are born that way … There are many things that harden your heart …. I hope these hardened hearts are not attacking the church getting support from people who don’t have a clue

We truly are living in the end times, it is evidenced all around us. The feminist movement has destroyed more lives in more ways than can be imagined. Blatant willfull selfishness all under the guise of equality. How many divorces, suicides and murders have resulted from such a wonderful self empowering movement! Still if only a minority have increased the quality of life as a result it must have it’s merits right? I mean hey, it worked for me, it didn’t work for you? Sorry, luck of the draw I guess.

Entitlement to commit legalized adultery, to the wanton destruction of family and home, the untold suffering of confused and demoralized children who believe they are to blame. A society where the woman being equal is paramount to the word of God. Men and women being equal is found nowhere in the Bible. Not to fear though we can correct that minor oversight. Our godless society will disregard the Lord, we shall create laws of the land we can live by that are far surpassing to our puny God and his inferior outdated wisdom. We teach the traditions of men, and not of God (Mark 7:13 / Matthew 15:9).

All hail no fault divorce!!! The pinnacle of the womans liberation movement, divorce for any reason you please, or for absolutely no reason at all! No longer the victims, now the victors who strike back at their oppressors due to any perceived slight. Never have the words of Genesis 3:16 brought more truth to bear than in this last fifty years. A woman’s desire for her husband? It will be to dominate him, a desire to usurp his place of leadership. So… husband not paying enough attention to you? Divorce him. Not bringing home enough money in his paycheck? Divorce him. Not enough fancy jewelry lavished upon you? Divorce him. Didn’t get that vacation in the Bahamas? Divorce him! Just not happy anymore? Got married too young? Not in love anymore? Just divorce him. YES you can! We made it just that simple, you can run off into the sunset with your gym instructor, co-worker, dentist etc. etc. after all. So called Christians don’t appear to be in the forgiveness business, they’re in the divorce and marriage killing business. And cousin, business is a boomin’. To make tons of money on other people’s marital misery, it’s the American way. Never forget to read the fine print though, the devil is always in the details.

Please do however recall the words of Christ on this subject matter (Luke 16:18). WHOSOEVER… not some, or me, or you, or the so called “innocent party” or the “exception clause” gang. WHOSOEVER marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Adultery is always conditional on the womans marital status! If you are a divorced woman, regardless of how you came to be in that state and your “first” husband is still alive there is NO OTHER QUALIFIER for this, your new marriage is adultery (1 Corinthians 7:39). The apostle Paul encourages women who are divorced to “remain single or be reconciled” (1 Corinthians 7:11). Again men and women are not equal in the bible, there are commands given strictly to men and woman concerning marriage, divorce and remarriage.

Sexual immorality is Satan’s greatest tool, look around you it’s everywhere. We can’t sell products without sex, it’s mandatory that commercials are blatantly sexual… sex sells is the age old adage. Satan knows this, he appeals to our fallen sinful lusts, his greatest weapon against humanity has always been sexual immorality of some form, because it’s tried and true, it works so he sticks with it. Adultery is the height of sexual immorality, it destroys the person who commits it (Proverbs 6:32). It can be a one way ticket to eternal life in Hell. Be ye not deceived, do you not know… (1 Corinthians 6:9)

I have often wondered why the “wide road” is so populated. I believe it is because of sexual immorality by far, it’s not the only reason of course, but It would appear to be the most predominant reason. Our society is saturated with sexual immorality, and it is celebrated daily. We don’t call it adultery anymore, we have affairs! We sell them in movies and novels, they are fun, we glamorize them to the point they are now considered exciting and it’s expected. You just have to have an affair it’s so cool, just look at all the famous celebrities who do it. God would never have blessed them with such fame and fortune if their affairs were really sinful would he? You just have to try it! It’s all the rage! Satan knows the Bible better than you or I ever will, don’t doubt it for a second, he wants you to believe things are OK with God. That God just loves everybody, that there won’t be any consequences for your sins. How is that working out for you? Nothing has happened yet? Must be you have a double portion coming to you up the road! God is not mocked (Galations 6:7).

How many times has God spoken through his word that he explicitly “hates” something? Not as many as you might think! But always best to look for yourself. He tells us in no uncertain terms that he “hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16). Think about that for awhile, let that sink in, do you really think it wise to do something God hates?! To challenge him? To put him to the test?

Bad news…there are no grounds for divorce, the adultery clause is not for those already married, it was for those in the betrothal period prior to consumating the actual marriage. Matthew was addressing the Jews in his gospel, where this supposed exception clause we use and abuse originates. Mark and Luke never mention adultery in their gospels because they are speaking to the Greeks and gentiles… to us.

Joseph and Mary were betrothed, Joseph planned to “put away” Mary because it appeared obvious that she had been unfaithful and gotten pregnant during their betrothal. It would have been lawful with God for Joseph to do so, however God sent an angel to inform Joseph of Marry’s innocence in the matter. We don’t have a betrothal period, this was a Jewish tradition, adultery is not grounds for divorce! It is not the unpardonable, unforgivable sin that so many wish it were. People will always twist scripture to look for a way out, and there will always be itching ears who will find a church, pastor or congregation that will tell them what they long to hear.

The divorce card, huh? So, that’s what they call it. Somewhere in 25 years, my ex-wife got one of those and worshipped it night and day, until she found a reason to leave our marriage. I don’t think I will ever marry again. I’m too afraid to. Women like this are crazy. Arghh!! I’m too upset to type anymore….

Sorry people…. divorce is a COWARDS way out of a marriage instead of haveing the intestinal fortitude to stay and work on the marriage. What the spouse who wants the divorce is doing is spitting in God’s face…. totally disregarding his authority over marriage. Women have a rose colored view of what marriage should be… in their minds. If it doesn’t match up with reality, they just run ut and get themselves a divorce. Worse, the courts are so perverse as to allw no fault divorces. Society is going to hell in a handbasket.

@John- “divorce is a COWARDS way out of a marriage instead of haveing [sic] the intestinal fortitude to stay and work on the marriage.”

John, I had a buddy who was married for 6 months to a gal he knew from high-school at age 23, and his wife banged a couple (!) other dudes while he was on a 3-month training deployment. She was still writing them love notes and hanging out with them when he came back. So let’s role-play. You’re that guy. No kids. Minimal assets. What would you do, given today’s marriage/legal environment for men?

I was married for 25 years, to a woman, who had and is still having, an emotional affair with her boyfriend from high school. The feminists, and the rest of the Man Hater Club, have a super powerful, all reaching, never sleeping secret weapon, called Facebook (and texting.) These things have ruined more marriages, in less time, than it took for Henry Ford to put a car in every garage. I couldn’t compete with the flowery manure he was giving her. The realities of married life, two of her four children having developmental issues and a husband (me) that tried to keep everything from imploding, were too much for her. Yes, I added to the problems… things, were difficult, but I stuck to my wedding promise to her. She always swore, as a Christian woman, never to divorce. When I asked her why she lied about her vows, she said I was controlling and filed an Order of Protection against me! Our American society sucks! I miss my marriage, but I will never get married again!

Time for a red pill fellas! This ain’t your world anymore and it hasn’t been for about 60 years or so. It’s a world run by the feminists and they call the shots, they are the ones in power. What we were taught about women is mostly lies, spoon fed to us by our very own mothers. Women don’t want equality they want sovereignty, the Bible was clear about this.

Bottom line is this… don’t ever divorce you wife let her divorce you, you can’t stop her anyway in this femcentric society! You will be obeying the words of Christ. Women are never allowed to divorce, they don’t have those rights, it doesn’t matter how many “laws” have been passed to allow them to do so! Once a woman is divorced she is in a constant state of adultery if she is with another man, doesn’t matter if she initiated the divorce or not… sucks to be a divorced woman! There will be HELL to pay on judgement day when all those divorced women are expecting the mercy of Christ to just ignore those sins because they were entitled to be happy with some other man besides the man they entered into vows with. It is that very “mercy” they are expecting that will condemn them, because he is a just judge.

People rarely take into account the fact the polygyny was never a sin in the Bible, a man could have as many wives as he could take care of. He was commanded to not divorce any of them however, and that if he did marry another after the divorce of any of those wives he would be committing adultery.

A pastor once told me that having more than one wife was “now” considered a sin! I asked him “is God the same yesterday, today and tomorrow?” and he said “Yes, God never changes.” So I asked ” If God never changes and God cannot sin, how is it that you can call something God allowed in the Bible sin now? Did he change his mind? Did God make a mistake? Is he fallible after all?” Basically left him in a stupor, so many in the pulpit preaching the gospel of man.

I did not divorce my wife, she divorced me for another man after 15 years of marriage which she is not allowed to do. I can remarry because I did not divorce her and I can have as many wives as I can afford to take care of. Only the law of the land makes polygyny unlawful, this was not so until the late 1800’s in this country. She can NEVER remarry unless I am dead, or it’s adultery…end of story. However if she desires to come back I have to take her back, that is where things get complicated. Check out the following link, this explains it better than I ever could. It’s a real red pill Biblical moment when you read this sites articles I promise!

Actually Christ did not state adultery was ground for divorce and remarriage. He stated. Fornication, and whatever he mean by that went against the Hillel school of thought, divorce for any reason, an the Shammai school, divorce for adultery.

I was waiting for someone to address this. The word of God is clear to me, there are only two exceptions for divorce, infidelity and and an unbelieving spouse choosing to leave the marriage. I verified my understanding of this with every major Theologian, Sproul, McArthur, Piper and about 10 other well known Theologians of different theological backgrounds. Not surprisingly, they all agree that adultery MUST be physical, NOT mental. A believer has no grounds to divorce their spouse if the guilty spouse imagined or viewed sex that was not within the marriage bed.

Separating completely from your spouse under these conditions is a completely different subject all together. I do believe that separation be valid for people with true addictions. For those that do divorce because of addictions and/or abuse, it may be not scriptural to divorce even in these situations, however it is understandable that some simply can not cope with this sort of condition and divorce. I do not believe the church should be judgmental in these cases, because very few can understand what it must be like to try and make a home with a coke addict or a spouse that abusing them daily. I believe in that case we should have mercy, grace and understanding for people in those situations even though they did not chose the Biblical mandate. Many of us would probably make the same decision.

I’ve only seen the porn-is-adultery be accepted theologically liberal crowd. Many in this crowd support homosexual clergy, and deny that Christ is the only way to salvation. It’s no surprise they do not hold the biblical exception for divorce. I am in no way saying that you should have to endure someone with a true porn habit. If this is the case, then I agree that the victim spouse can lay just about anything on the table to remedy the situation, up to and including indefinite separation until the problem is fixed.

So assuming that the assertions that “porn is adultery” or an “addiction is equivalent to being married to an unbeliever” are true statements (which they are not), given the statistics, nearly every woman on earth would be validated in divorcing their spouse. In addition to that , just about 50% of every man would also have that excuse, because the rates at which women are gaining addictions and viewing pornography is catching up to the men.. I’ve listened some of these christian talk radio shows on porn addiction, what baffling to me is many of these men and women only viewed porn maybe once or twice in a 2 year span, but yet it was classified as an “addiction”. If i drink win once or twice in a 2 year span, am I addicted to alcohol?

Let’s take this to absurdity. Let’s say I imagine sexual relations with a person that was not my spouse, am I subject to divorce? I mean after all, Jesus did say that if you look lustfully upon a woman, you have committed adultery in your heart , didn’t he? Continuing, I then repent of my sin, and then 6 months later, I imagine it again, is divorce NOW justified? From the porn-is-adultery argument, divorce is not justifiable for imagine sex, but if you actually view it, it’s adultery.

It amazes me that that argument has any legs. Is it only permissible because the guilty spouse has no hard evidence of his sin, i.e. computer, magazine? The legitimacy of this argument is about as valid as “a fetus is not life” that the pro choice movement uses. I am going out on a limb here, if we all knew the sexual thoughts of our spouses, I would dare say that 99.999% of every Christian would be justified for divorce for simply thinking impure thoughts.

Also, on the perceived difficulty of marriage, Jesus himself said NOT to marry if you can not accept that one can not divorce for ANY reason. An important subtlety to note on this is that it was his disciples that said “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” NOT the pharisees. So this was not a setup to ensnare Jesus, it was true Christians questioning the marriage covenant. If the disciples were clearly addressed by Jesus for this, we as believers should take it to heart as if Jesus were talking to us!

I think Jesus was serious when he said listen if you have ears when he stated that. Believers should not get married if you believe they can get divorced. By no means should one believe there are “get-out-of-marriage-free-cards”.

The porn argument really works well for women wanting to leave marriage. But what if men could use common male reasoning to get out of marriage? The following are reasons that many men around the world are pondering getting a divorce over right now: 1) She has put us in debt over clothes, jewelry, furniture and vacation, 2) she’s gained way too much weight and won’t lose it, 3) she is denying sex far too often, 4) she won’t follow anything I try to suggest for the family’s direction.

These are all unbiblical reasons for divorce, yet i would guess a huge majority of men deal with these issues on a daily basis, yet can’t site these reasons if they wished to divorce biblically. It may sound funny, but a man up to eye balls in debt with only costume to jewelry to show for it, that hasn’t had sex in a year and whose 250 pound wife runs the household would LOVE to get a divorce as much as the woman whose man who has viewed porn. Unfortunately, the woman is justified , but the man is not. Truth is, NEITHER are justified in the eyes of the Lord.

It seems that the modern church says, “If you earn the love of your wife’s heart, THEN and only then should she do any of her spousal duties”. It’s clear that the word says to obey Jesus if you love him,with no conditions. A spouse should not be allowed to spend the family out of house and home because the offending spouse forgot to to say “I love you” on the way out. I am just wondering whatever happened to the days of clearly discerning what the word of God’s word and obeying it?

Doesn’t the Bible say that Obedience is greater than sacrifice. Isn’t God’s will even bigger than the Cross itself? Yes marriage is difficult, but the pop christian psychologists, christian self help and liberal theologians are diminishing the word all together. Feminism is the first stop, watch and see what’s next. This is in no way given power to men that abusing and addicted to porn, but instead taking away power from women that want to divorce a man because he had a weakness and viewed porn, or said she DOES look fat in that dress far too often. And for the record my wife is not overweight , does not spend me out of house and home, does not deny me sex and home,and I am not addicted to porn.

Well, I have read Christian (“Christian”) women state that they denied sex in order for their husbands to resort to pornography in order for them to justify divorce. If women are unrestricted in their movements, and there are a few “instant death” traps for men, they need only back men into one of them and that’s the end of it.

Thank you for speaking up and telling the truth (I heard “repent” loud and clear !” . I wish more women and men in the body of Christ would take the Word of God for face value and get back to the simplicity that is in Christ. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever – and so are His commands on marriage. Thank you again Dalrock.

The moment men get shut down sexually by their wives is when all Hell breaks loose.

Men will find another woman and the ones who are a bit stronger and who fear God and love their children a bit more, will resort to bittersweet porn stints as a band-aid, until they can figure out how to restore their marriages somehow.

Both sides have to bend and Fireproof shows one 1 side bending – poor Caleb. What an utterly ridiculous movie; also for other reasons.

But to stay on point, one of my close friend’s wife planned how to divorce him “the right way.”

She shut him down sexually for 3 months. Then kept a close watch on him during this time. She then caught him masturbating to porn before 4 months had gone by.

She printed the websites, publicly showed everyone in church and got her divorce by humiliating her ex-husband because she simply decided she didn’t “love him” anymore and that she could’ve done better.

What we have today is a generation of reality TV loving “Christian” wives heavily influenced by the Housewives et al, and they don’t have a clue about what submission means and how that’d transform every men into a Christ-like loving husband.

I see that most of the comments on here are men… as the wife of a porn addict, married for 9 years and trying to make it work the entire 9 years, I can tell you that I have been counseled by both church and non-church counselors to divorce and it doesn’t have to just do with the porn. It goes much further than just pornography… men who are caught up in pornography become totally self-centered. They lie to protect themself and they are not trustworthy. They justify their actions and will argue and put their wives down and become verbally abusive. If their wives don’t live up to the unrealistic expectations of what they’ve viewed, there’s something wrong with their wives (again verbal abuse). My husband’s addiction started when he was a teenager, long before I came along. Unfortunately, I didn’t find out about it until shortly after we were married. We tried counseling, I tried support groups for wives of addicts, I’ve gone to counseling on my own. Nothing works to change our marriage. Why? Because my husband cares more about his porn than he does about the marriage. It’s simple as that. I’d love to have sex with my husband but not under the circumstances he set up. Why torture myself? Why get verbally abused and made to feel like crap. After time you start to believe what’s said and it take a lot longer to rebuild yourself than it takes to be torn down. I had made myself available for him anytime anywhere for a period of time thinking that would help. It didn’t. This is not about me… it’s about him and his mind being sick. So perhaps when you bash the scene from Fireproof, you should not assume that the wife is frigid, but look at it with empathy and how difficult and hurtful it can be to be married to a porn addict. The pornography is just breaking one of the the commandments… the vows are broken in pieces, though, when your husband verbally abuses, is not trust-worthy, etc. How is that loving? Think about wedding vows, think about the Bible’s definition of love… it protects, is kind, it does not harm, it is not self-seeking, does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth… a porn addiction is not loving and if a partner has no desire to give up the vows have been broken. This isn’t about a glance here and there… that’s natural, but a porn addiction is a completely different thing and if the man is unwilling to change, then why should the wife be sentenced to abuse? I’m not looking for a relationship or sex with another person… I’m looking to be in a situation that’s safe and without verbal abuse. It would take time to just build myself self-esteem back up to being in a healthy place where a relationship was even a good idea.

“If that means conflating viewing pornography with actual adultery, so be it.”
Matthew 5:28 states that it is.

Should the woman have withheld? No.
Should the man have turned to porn? No.
Should the woman have turned to another man or the prospect of divorce? No.
I do agree that churches are too soft on divorce.

You don’t know what the definition of emotional abuse is because you’re a woman-hating ignoramus who can’t be bothered to do a simple Google search about it. Emotional abuse is real, and emotional abusers can steal the joy out of their families. They often progress to physical and/or sexual abuse and they DO NOT change.

I think Katie has emotionally ‘abused’ all the men who read her comment. It might be a good time for her to get back in the kitchen and make us some sammiches while reflecting on the actual meaning of the word ‘joy’ and how life isn’t a fantasy tailor made just for women.

My wife has a friend whose husband is a porn addict, and he is not abusive to his wife. Nor does he lie to her all the time. His wife is aware of the problem. She doesn’t approve, but neither does she use it as an excuse to hate her husband.

This woman doesn’t confuse looking at pornographic pictures with the act of adultery. Though both are sinful, they are not the same and she knows it. If looking at porn is grounds for divorce, so is reading romance novels. The same chemicals are released in the female brain from those as in the male brain from porn.

She also doesn’t foolishly claim that verbal ‘abuse’ is grounds for divorce. If it were than more men would have the right to end their marriages than women. After reading your rant I’m left with the impression that the tiniest bit of criticism hurts your feelings and is therefore ‘abuse’. Granted your husband has a problem, but so do you.

I think this IS about you. If you cared about your husband, you would be concerned for his eternal soul, and not obsessed with how unhappy you are. Marriage is not a cake walk. We all have problems to deal with and our cross to carry.

Given that attraction to the female form is normal, is it even medically-coherent to assert that one can be addicted to it even in the form of pixilated images. It is not my fault that access to images thereof is as easy as a mouse-click. If it is the case that I am addicted to Porn, then it does not seem to be affecting my life generally nor does it deflate my attraction to real women, nor does it imply that every image is equally attractive – some images have little more than curiosity value.

Porn-addiction is thus in my view probably a piece of anti-male shaming, dreamt up by unattractive women attempting to salvage something of their limited charms. Women always seem to berate males for any interest outside of themselves.

This has me mulling over my current Christian state, Byzantine Catholicism, to be precise, one which emphatically frowns upon divorce.

All of that aside, I virtually gave up on dating Christian women in the summer of 2011 after a string of painfully failed attempts at “doing things the right way”. Hell, I was even a virgin until that summer (I was 29 at that time), when I caved in (more like, I didn’t turn down an opportunity to hook up w a younger woman who didn’t treat me like shit by virtue of my having a penis, all while preaching the Gospel, as I had in times past).

The short of it is that I now feel alienated from my faith, as I feel like my faith doesn’t know what in the world to do with single, 32-year old men who refuse to settle down with feminist Christians. At present, I am happily dating a beautiful 23 year old woman who is anti-feminist and both treats and respects me as a man. She isn’t Christian, but when I tell her on, say, a Sunday evening that I went to church earlier that morning (I haven’t regularly attended for a few years now, with maybe a visit once a month at the most), and her reply is to be happily supportive, saying something akin to, “That’s awesome! I’m glad that you went!”, as she knows how much I still identify with it.

My options were to either remain single since I’m “not supposed to date” non-Christian women, and resort to jerking off and porn for sexual release (with the occasional one-night stand sprinkled in for good measure); settle with one of these abhorrent Christian feminists; or do what I’m now doing, making the best of what’s on my plate.

I hate referring to my girlfriend as “making the best of what’s on my plate”, as it sounds belittling, when, in reality, she is only the second woman whom I’ve ever dated in any sense where I felt respected as a man. The last one was two-years ago (ie, I was 30 by the time I dated a girl in any sense who respected me as a man) was from Latin America, and hated American culture. She flatout told me, the first time that we met, that American women are psychotic and entitled; and that American men are weak, as they let women walk all over them. “You are the first American man whom I have ever felt attracted to beyond just the physical”, emphasizing that my being manly, refusing to sacrifice that just for the sake or a relationship w an American or “devout” Christian woman (Christian women, in my experience, are about as slutty as secular women).

Anyways, as I’ve said, I’m just mulling over my current state. I peruse your blog fairly regularly, and it’s quite a nice balance in the mix of those over at ROK, along with Matt Forney, Heartiste and JudgyBitch, especially as you take the time to address these matters from a Christian perspective.

I would like to challenge the underlying premise that adultery is grounds for divorce. The ‘exception clause’ in Matt’s gospel [5:32 & 19:9] refers to premarital sex not post nuptial adultery. Please consider the following reasons:

Firstly, the cultural context of the exception clause. A girl that is ‘damaged goods’ was considered unsuitable for marriage. Consider the example of King David’s daughter Tamar. After she was raped by Amnon her half brother and he wanted nothing more to do with her, she said; …To reject me now is a greater crime than the other you did to me… [Living Bible] 2Sam.13:16 She understood that nobody would want her because she was no longer a virgin. Tamar was not in love with Amnon but he was her only chance at marriage and she understood that rejection was worse than rape. There are many other examples in the Bible of this; Joseph and Mary, in the New Testament, and in Exod. 22:17 Moses mentions the …dowry of virgins. It was well understood that a dowry was paid for a virgin but if a girl had lost her virginity she didn’t command a dowry. This attitude still prevails in many cultures today, only the western world seems to have forgotten this truth.
Premarital sex is the best interpretation of the Greek word porneia because of the importance of virginity in establishing a new marriage. Once upon a time this truth was well understood, and it is clearly written in the old Testament and Matt’s Gospel was written to the Jews.

Secondly) The context of the ‘exception clause’ shows it to be a higher standard, not a lower standard. Any study of the Sermon on the Mount reveals that Jesus is teaching from the Old Testament and setting a higher standard for His followers, e.g.
Matt. 5:21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: 22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment:
A higher standard, and this is the point where the ‘exception clause’ first appears (Matt. 5:32) and it is therefore a higher standard. By interpreting porneia to mean post nuptial sexual misconduct by either party effectively lowers the standard, and worse it puts Jesus somewhere in between rabbi Shammai and rabbi Hillel.

When the pharisees asked Jesus about this subject in Matt. 19 it was because they had their own dispute about divorce and remarriage. Rabbi Shammai taught that a man could only divorce his wife if she committed adultery, but rabbi Hillel taught that a man could divorce his wife for any reason, even a trivial reason could be grounds for divorce. That’s why they asked Jesus His opinion, but Jesus clearly distanced Himself from their argument, and set a much higher standard.

Good long ariticle ..but marriage isnt so much as complicated as all you christians peopel put it …. you forget the basics and common sense… bit like people who want to lose weight they get caught up on theory and books and the next best fitness gurus ..and throw out self responsibility amd common sense and realities of life .. from my honest humble view …forget about your religion ..forget about ya pastors ..gurus or books …just ask your self …..do you like the person you are with ..do you enjoy them and have fun with them and respect them ….you marry your best friend some one who celebrates you and makes your life just more fun ..and you have common dreams n goals …if not its like you never had the right foundations to start with …you see its not the foundation of faith that gonna help you ..its common friggin sense..DO YOU GET ALONG ..DO YOU ENJOY THE OTHER PERSON …does not matter if ya both christians ..muslim ..jewish ..hindus …if you dont have those very basic things everything else will be prolematic .

Why do you think they got married in the first place? Who says “You know I don’t really get along with or enjoy X, but I think I’ll marry X anyhow”?

Instead what often happens is the usual excitement at the beginning of a relationship where both the man and the women are experiencing the bliss of endorphin rush. So they marry and pretty soon the thrill is gone and she starts to feel UNHAPPY. She no longer enjoys much of anything because she “fell out of love” (no more rush). She has convinced herself that she got a raw deal, and somehow it’s the fault of the other person.

She, like many of her piers, thinks that faithfulness, commitment, and even the well being of any children involved are secondary to her happiness, and proceeds to do what 75% of divorced women do.

Wow ! Fantastic post and fantastic responses ! I have been looking for words like these for a couple of years now, I guess that I simply did not have the right words in my Google search !

In reading your initial post – it brought many, many thoughts to mind – almost all of those verbalized through/in the comments. I won’t waste your time and bits repeating what others have said – but a couple of things that I’d like to add:

My ex (Christian woman who is responsible for me seeking and with Jesus, accepting His salvation) and her Christian friends almost hold the fact of their leaving their marriages and subsequent divorce as a badge of honor, a ‘merit badge’ so-to-speak, in that they were ‘strong enough’ (after 20, 25, 30 years of marriage) to leave. And yes – the church embraces them – ‘hating the sin, but loving the sinner’.

I will also add that my ex works for a Christian organization and it too responded in the exact same way as the church – ‘hating the sin but loving the sinner’ to the point where I, who regularly volunteered in/for the organization was ‘cast aside’.

And very few in the church have held she and her friends ‘accountable’ for their actions (while regularly ‘intervening’ with me wrt my actions and on what I did to contribute to the collapse of our marriage). The few times when others (e.g., pastor’s wife, women of influence in the church, etc.) attempted to hold she (and her friends) accountable for their role or part in the dissolution of their marriages – the standard answer provided by them, which immediately puts one on the defensive is/was: “You don’t know me and my situation. You don’t know what was going on behind the front door of my home. Where were you 10, 15 years ago ? You have no business coming in now, telling me how to live.”

And with that comment by them I say to my ex and to her friends “Congratulations. You have just changed the topic and moved the focus off of your actions (and sin) and moved the focus back on to the failings of and emotional wasteland of ‘the slug’ (the name that she uses when referring to me to her friends).

Dalrock, I really appreciate your post because I’m going through ‘it’ right now. And I want to suggest that marital faithfulness means different things to each gender but I will tell my story leading up to it as this is happening right now in my life.

My wife and I agreed that I would leave the military and start a business, and that the events leading up to that felt like God clearly shutting doors in my career. Now that we’re right at the beginning of the transition my wife is very concerned about my getting a job. Due to sequestration they offered the voluntary separation pay so we’re theoretically squared away with about two years living expenses, which was part of the decision making.

Well my wife and I got in a fight about a month ago when we got separated in the neighborhood at night while I went for a run and she joined me on a bike while her parents were visiting and watched the kids. So we lost track of each other and I knew she would blame me (she is scared at night) when I got back to the house and I would be incredulous that she had the bike!, and therefore (in my mind) she was to follow me. I decided I would keep my mouth shut but I couldn’t, she wouldn’t leave me alone while I took a shower and I was so frustrated I called her a “f***ing idiot a couple times.” Which I’ve never done in 13 years of marriage, at least not out loud. If you’ve seen Mark Gungor’s “Laugh your way to a better marriage” seminar, which is awesome. He points out that in marriage conflict the Women judge the Men’s Heart, and the Men judge the Womans’ brain. And it is so true, She gets away with telling me how mean I am, how unkind, unfeeling, un-whatever she feels and my temptations are to tell her how she’s not making sense, is dumb, etc. Well I did and It hasn’t been pretty ever since.

So what do these things have to do with each other. The one issue of the career change was simmering, the issue of the name calling / emotional abuse was another. But as Mark Gungor says, everything in a Woman’s brain is connected, versus the Man’s compartmentalized. So her security is threatened by the career change and the anticipation that she will have to watch the bank account drain (what about college tuition saving and investing!) while I pursue a business dream versus a job. We also don’t know where we want to live, my job will mostly be IT development so I don’t feel too constrained. (yes I know she could get a job too, but I’ve 14 years in engineering profession)

I’ll connect these situations, but mostly has to do with the way she connects them.

More about her: Her dad used to call her and family an idiot or stupid a lot. Heck, it’s a normal part of his life I watch him watching football saying “huh, that’s stupid” as an armchair quarterback. He and his wife are the Archie Bunker scenario, “dumb and submissive wife,” “uncaring and overbearing insensitive husband.” And she knows it and fears it and has always hated her dad, but that has transitioned and she accepts him now and hates her mom for being so weak and allowing the dynamic my wife experienced. The reason for her hate is that she sees these things in herself and has been in denial until lately. (I think this is an outcome that the measure by which you judge you will be judged by), in her case she judged them very harshly and it’s that much more difficult for her to accept herself….thus the long denial…and now painful conflict)

She’s been doing a lot of reading about the situation, and about abusive self centered men to include Christian men of which I’ve been categorized…so she has stated. So we’ve been married 14 years and we have four children. Now that she’s categorized me, she calls into judgment my every move. Challenges my discipline, my tone of voice, etc if it strikes her spidy-sense that I’m out of line. She’s been reading about “boundaries”, “love-is-tough”, and “why does he do that” and she has been practicing her boundary placing on me. The problem for me is that she is very forceful in her confrontation, whether it is intense eye contact, raised voice and overbearing assertiveness such as repeating herself until an acceptable acknowledgement is received. (very emasculating for me!)

And of course intimacy of all forms have stopped 1.5 months now. We can barely talk, and if we do it has to stay “professional,” or else she doesn’t take it too well. I think it pisses her off a lot that she can say almost anything and I processes it and pretty much view everything she says as some reaction to me. She feels like I’m condescending in my attitude as I attempt not to react to her or reflect her emotion. Most of my reason for that is to prevent escalation or from allowing the situation from getting the best of me, or hoping that my interests would be cared for. I get it…She wants me to care not to think, but for some reason I think. That’s another problem, she asked me recently if I thought that I was cruel, she wanted me to flect and answer honestly. So I thought and said I don’t think so. She cited how I liked to antagonize animals or push boundaries and I thought about it and reflected and contrasted her memory that I’m very protective and caring about animals but I like to play with them, for which she agreed. She thought further and pressed, but come to find out she wasn’t using the proper definition of cruel. She felt it meant to be mean or unkind, whereas I thought it meant to intentionally inflict pain. In that conversation we look up a few more words to find out that she wasn’t using them properly to include the word “care.” Come to find out from her definition of care was actually to pity. When she learned that she didn’t want pity because of the connotations of pity. Actually men are great at caring because it involves attempting to solve or fix the situation such as a ‘caregiver’, but what women describe as care is more like pity or sympathy.

So I talked to a female co-worker (actually 3, all older) who is a Christian and who is also Widowed, in her 60s and shared my story with her. She pointed out to me something profound and that is the issue of Security. She said you can take away a lot of things from a woman to include Romantic love, but once you take away her security you are shaking her world. And anything where security is important to her can be multiplied by the number of children she has.

So, coming back to the marital faithfulness piece. Was it Jesus who said; that should a man divorce his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness; if she goes to remarry that guilt of adultery will be on his (the divorcing husband) head. I understand this to mean that if he divorces her without providing for her financially that he is not fulfilling his obligation to provide and she will need a redeemer to survive, and it will be his fault to put her in that situation by divorcing her.

I’m suggesting that for women to stop having sex with their husbands is marital unfaithfulness, and that for husbands to withdraw security is marital unfaithfulness of course in addition to any vows that were made before God on the wedding day. Most Christians make custom vows and go beyond “Chosen people culture” and say they will deny all others. Yet, God offered Solomon Money, Power, and Women all of which we know is not God Tempting him, because God does not temp us. Consider David’s first wife who was remarried while he was on the run, but he took her back later on. She was disgusted with him for his public display of excitement for the relocation of the Ark. So he didn’t have relations with her but still provided for her (but didn’t relate with her), yet he had many other wives.

Now Christians believe in monogamy, mostly because of the guidance given for choosing elders in the early church, the criteria is to have only one wife. But based on Paul’s guidance to be single, it has more to do with being available for ministry versus how much time would be spent caring for a large family.

So any male who reads this and thinks they have some open door to a extra-marital relationship is very wrong. First double check your vows which is a covenant you made with God and family, without a gun to your head. Also, if you think porn is any less wrong due to this, think again, Porn is not love, it is abuse. It is abuse to your spirit, abuse of the people creating it, both the males and the females. I think that all Christian men who struggle with porn can relate to the obvious battle between flesh and spirit. If you are God’s your spirit will cry within you. if you look at the faces of the people involved you are lie-ing to yourself if you think they are edified by the activity. Some are sex slaves, some are seeking money and throwing their bodies away, some are likely possessed by a demon and your enjoying the fruit of their efforts. I don’t say this to shame anyone to include myself, just know that if you are a Son of God, the truth will set you free, and the truth is it is not edifying

So what am I to do when I need intimacy, or what is my wife to do when she needs intimacy. Are we to justify our wrongs like children. Or are we to stop thinking like children and realize there is battle and we are in it, drafted by birth. The battle is not with your spouse, or against her parents, or her counselor, or bad advice friend etc. The battle is in heavenly realms, and it is where we show that we are Christ’s in how we love one another. Not when everything is hunky-dorry, but when the challenge’s come. Don’t live for the now, live for Christ. Is she is so bad, or he is so bad then love them with Christ’s love, that is your calling. Fortunately you not a prisoner of war, or being tortured for your faith, your calling is to love. Slaves obey your masters, we have no excuses.

Be thankful in all things!, because that is the spirit with which we will succeed, dont pity yourself for that is the spirit where we are tempted to have and leads to justifying our sin, which cannot be justified…and read Job if you need some perspective on what to be thankful for.

The argument that the man is saving up for a boat and would not spend the money on the wife’s mother is specious. American women spend gobs of money on their weddings without an afterthought as to the practicality of such expenditures. I know this for a fact. my hobby is fashion design.
I asked my sewing instructor one day if women are buying expensive wedding gowns simply for bragging rights. She said yes, that is what they are doing. They simply want to see how much money they can get from a man. in fact she told me that $4000 gowns are trashed after the wedding.

The main reason Christian marriages are a bit more likely to be “successful” is due to the threat of hell if you divorce, or that one will at least lose favor and therefore blessing or protection from God should one divorce. That’s like saying arranged marriages are more successful; they’re basically only found in religious circles that include fear-based motivation based on the threat of evil, or the withholding of blessing. It’s not a fair comparison. Besides, I grew up in a church with a whole bunch of what I’m referring to, and there were very few divorces but many couples living a estranged in the same house.

Good job mate at dalrock – there are lots of people who want to talk about our Zeitgeist. I don’t want to call it mind control or brain wash, but surely our current Zeitgeist is a seductive atheist philosophy that has formed an alliance with the most militant religion on earth to push back true benevolence and kindness (Christianity),

Clint, I can blow away your saying porn viewing is adultery with one question. Adultery requires two people having sex. When a permanently-deadbedded husband finally starts going to pornhub a few times a week, who is the other person he is having skin-to-skin sexual contact with? Take your time…

Point #2, re that guy deciding after a year or two that enough is enough: his marital vows were for monogamy, not celibacy. His now-estranged (from his hands and penis, if not from his wallet and chore time) wife quit her job as wife. She broke up with him. The position is open, by her choice. No noncompete clause could cover when the employer has shut down and laid off the employee without grounds.

You couldn’t be more wrong. Go read Stephen Baskerville’s excellent book “Taken Into Custody” so you’ll know SOMETHING about American divorce now.

Whenever I run into some feminist dimwit spouting this sorta nonsense, I agree and amplify.

Not only are divorce laws totally fair to men, they benefit children tremendously. Every child wants to have his father kidnapped away from him, and to be left alone and psychologically defenseless in the world. Kids love that shit, ya know. Look at the stats. Kids do far better after they are made bastards than they do in a normal, functional, two-parent home. We must make divorce mandatory, and soon. Needs to be a national priority.

Yep, mommies tattood drug using kinda rapey edgy bf just out of jail is so much better than the stable in work loving father that they had, and even if the bf does something illegal to the underage girls, no problem,he will be rotated and a new one will appear soon, courtesy of the paycheck delivered everymonth from the bio dad.

we really are at the stage where you cant tell teh difference between satire and reality. oh f*ck.